


Lead A Horse To Water

by Mithrigil



Category: Sengoku Basara
Genre: Age Difference, Coming of Age, Contracts, Multi, Next Generation, Shigenaga, Wakashūdo, are you there honored ancestors? it's me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-05
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-20 10:00:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 69,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/584135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/pseuds/Mithrigil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Date Masamune is a difficult man to serve. Unfortunately for Katakura Shigenaga, it is the duty of all Katakura to do so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Content note: Shigenaga starts out the story at sixteen, Masamune is in his early forties. Issues of agency if not necessarily consent as per [wakashudo as an institution](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wakashudo#Terminology).
> 
> Pairing note: In addition to a whole lot of people getting a whole lot of married, this has background and past Masamune/Yukimura and Masamune/Kojuro, and a whole bunch of other peripheral past (and present) pairings.
> 
> History note: Since Sengoku Basara plays hard and fast with history, I did here too. Most characters, including Shigenaga, have a historical basis, but their ages and circumstances don’t, and can’t, stack up with SenBasa’s version of events. Basically, like the dev team, I did my research, picked the parts that were funny, workable, or too good to pass up, and threw the rest out the window in the name of Rule of GAR.

**Lead A Horse To Water**

**or, _how I learned to stop whining and love the boss_**

***

Even though I had seen Lord Masamune twice before I first spoke to him, I didn’t remember his face. The first time, my father says, I was too young to remember much of anything, much less speak, and all I needed to know was that Lord Masamune was pleased with me. The second time, I was ill, and we don’t speak of it.

The time in question--the third--was five years ago, the day I came to train and serve at Sendai. My father and I were a day and a half late, and Lord Masamune reprimanded us personally. He met us in the central courtyard under a red maple tree. The day before, he might have been in full armor to greet all of the new pages and promote the old ones and arm his new retainers: today, because we were late, he was in kimono and hakama, with only one sword instead of six, and no helmet, no horse, no crest. I only knew it was him because of the patch over his right eye, and because my father told me to bow.

I didn’t want to do it, but my father had already made it clear I had to, so I got on my knees and put my face to the ground and didn’t let him see how angry I was to be here.

“What the hell took you so long?” he said.

My father explained that we’d run into some trouble with bandits, and that even though he’d killed them quickly, he turned us back to the house to make sure it wasn’t part of an attack on the estate. It was true, but it wasn’t everything, though my father can’t be expected to admit what I’d done.

Lord Masamune accepted the explanation. My father wasn’t bowing--he didn’t have to--and it felt like Lord Masamune was completely ignoring me. “Yeah, sounds like you. So was it?”

“Hm?”

“Was it an attack on Shiroshi?”

“No, my lord.”

“Shit, I was hoping to have something to do.”

I looked up. I shouldn’t have, but what he’d said and the way he’d said it--laughing through his nose, like an attack on my home was a joke over lunch--made me want to see the face of the man who dared.

Aside from the missing eye, it was a well-made face. I had always imagined Lord Masamune as someone hateful and proud, with a dragon’s moustaches and perpetually bared teeth. That wasn’t the case. He was clean-shaven, for one thing, and even though I knew he was younger than my father I hadn’t thought what a difference ten years can make. He looked like most of the muscles in his face were used for smirking, with creases in his forehead as deep as the strap of his eyepatch, and his hair was ragged and unbound and just beginning to run grey.

But his teeth were bared, and they were as sharp as I’d expected.

“Got something to say to me, Shigetsuna?”

“Shigenaga,” my father and I corrected at the same time. I think my father hoped it would stop Lord Masamune from looking at me. It didn’t.

Lord Masamune laughed. “Didn’t want to step on Ieyasu’s toes, that it?”

I didn’t put my head back down. “It wasn’t my choice.”

My father coughed.

I corrected myself. “It was not my decision, Lord Masamune. My lord can call me what he likes.” But I didn’t bow my head again. I wanted to see him laugh at that too, as long as he was laughing at everything else of mine.

Sure enough, he did. And he reached down and took me by the chin and tilted me higher, sharp enough that my knees almost left the ground. I had a hard bruise on my left cheek, and his fingers were jammed right into it, and I couldn’t help crying out.

He noticed. “You get this fighting?”

It was true enough, so I said “Yes, Lord Masamune.”

“Good,” he said, “’cause you’ll be fighting a hell of a lot.” He looked at me once more, and let me go, and to my credit I didn’t fall to the dirt or catch myself on my hands. “Have someone show you the pages’ quarters. You’re late. **Catch up.** ”

I only bowed to him again because my father was there.

***

That was five years ago, as I said. I’ve been at Sendai ever since. Lord Masamune doesn’t speak to me directly, except to tell me occasionally to fetch this sword or that, or tell me that the so-and-so’s armor is chipped. I’m fine with this. If I’m lucky, he’ll be dissatisfied enough with me that he’ll send me to court instead and I won’t have to worry about serving him.

“That’s stupid,” Yukinobu says. “If you want the boss to let you go, you have to be an idiot.”

“Do not,” I say.

“Do so,” he says. “If you’re too good, he’ll keep you around even if he doesn’t like you.”

“You’re just saying that so I’ll let you win this afternoon.”

“Ha, no way!”

This afternoon is a page tournament. I’ve done well in the last few--knocked out in the semifinals last time, and the quarterfinals the time before, and the time before that I came in sixth and lost to Mitsukaga, who went on to win, so that counts for something. 

“I mean it, though,” Yukinobu says. “Throw the match and see what happens if you don’t believe me.”

“You’re both idiots,” Kikuhime says.

She’s not supposed to be here. I’d tell her so, but the last time I told her so she beat me up. Okay, that was two years ago, and now she’s finished growing and I haven’t (at least I hope not), but I’m not supposed to fight girls and she knows it. I’m pretty sure that’s why she insists otherwise.

Well, even if I can’t tell her she’s not supposed to be in the pages’ quarters, Yukinobu can, and does. “Get permission or get out!”

She elbows him on the back of the head hard enough to knock him into the nearest stack of spears. Several of them come loose and topple to the floor. I hear my father’s voice in my head, reminding me, _This is how the Sanada family shows affection. Just ignore her and don’t fight back._ “There. That’s permission! You can’t keep me out, so I can stay.”

“Sis, we have to get ready.”

“No you don’t. You’re both going to lose anyway, so there’s no point.”

“Speak for yourself,” I say, picking up some of the fallen spears, “and your brother if he lets you, but I’m not going to lose.”

She snatches one of the spears out of my hands, quick enough that it’d burn my palms if I wasn’t wearing gloves. “Then what’s this I hear about you throwing the tournament?”

“I didn’t say anything about throwing the tournament.”

“Good, since that would make you a coward.”

“I’m not a coward!”

“Only a coward would consider throwing a tournament to get out of his filial obligations.”

“I said I’m not a coward!”

She twirls the spear in her hand. I yank it back, and I don’t care it if knocks her off her feet, and I shove it back into the rack on the wall.

“Don’t throw it,” she says, like it’s an order.

She doesn’t get to order me around, but fine. “I won’t.”

“Good,” she says. She smiles and dusts her hands off by clapping them together, but takes the spear off the wall again and flourishes it. I duck. Yukinobu doesn’t, and it gets him in the side of the head.

“Hey! What was that for?!”

“For suggesting someone throw a tournament just so you can win!” She gives him another wallop on the head for it. He doesn’t manage to dodge this one either. “And you dare call yourself a Sanada!”

Third time’s the charm, it seems: he throws up his hands to block this stroke, though that means she hits him on the sword-arm instead and that’s not much better. “I didn’t suggest it so I could win! I suggested it because Shige doesn’t want to serve the boss!”

This is shocking enough, it seems, to make Kikuhime stall the spear. “Why wouldn’t you want to serve Lord Masamune?”

I don’t have to tell her I don’t like him, so I won’t. Besides, she wouldn’t get it. “I shouldn’t have to.”

“Of course you should, you’re a Katakura. It should be your honor!”

At least she’s shocked enough that I can take the spear back again and put it on the wall where it belongs. “Not everyone does what his family sets him out to do.”

She doesn’t try to take the spear back this time, just fidgets with the dangling tassel. “You have to, though. You’re the next Kojuro.”

“My father is my father,” I say. I shouldn’t speak to a lady in that tone. It’s too late. “I’m me. Not him.”

“So what would you do instead?”

“Whatever he wants,” Yukinobu says.

Kikuhime glares at him. “And what are _you_ going to do, Yukinobu, whatever _you_ want?” 

“It’s not like we have a domain to serve anymore,” Yukinobu says.

“Then you should serve Lord Masamune respectfully and with gratitude!”

“Hey, Shige’s the one who doesn’t want to serve, not me!”

So this time she glares at me. Being glared at by a girl you’re not allowed to fight with is kind of like saddling a gelding you can’t ride. “And you think throwing a tournament is the way to get out of it?”

“I already told you I’m not going to throw it!” My fist hits the wall, and most of the spears fall off the rack, and I don’t even think about it until my hand starts ringing in my glove.

Shit.

“Great!” Yukinobu says, through grit teeth. “Now you won’t have to throw the match.”

One more spear clatters to the floor.

“Idiots,” Kikuhime says.

***

My hand is fine. Well, not fine, but I’ve had worse bruises, and I can still hold the sword, and there’s no way I’m going to use that as an excuse. Whether I want to impress Lord Masamune or not, I gave my word, and I am _not_ a coward. And even if I don’t think it’s cowardly to stand down if I’m injured I will never give Kikuhime a reason to think I am a coward after all.

Once all the pages are assembled, the master-at-arms, Yoshinao, shuffles and hangs our chits on the board for the first round. I’m up third, against Mitsukaga right from the start. Yukinobu is on first, and I don’t want to say it aloud but Hidemune’s gonna kick his ass.

Lord Masamune has four sons already and a fifth on the way, and one daughter. Hidemune’s the eldest by a long shot, only one year younger than I. Irohahime’s ten, and the rest of the sons are all too young to page. So Hidemune gets a lot of attention during training. I wouldn’t call it special treatment, since he’s that good and he deserves it, but I do resent it, especially when my father is involved. I know my father isn’t supposed to go easy on me when he comes to inspect us, and I wouldn’t want him to, but that doesn’t mean he has to go twice as hard on me and not hard on Hidemune at all.

And sure enough, Hidemune kicks Yukinobu’s ass in the first pass. He’s got this one unorthodox move he does to get out of binds, a low spinning backhand straight for the head, and Yukinobu doesn’t see it coming before it clocks him. Over in the stands, Lord Masamune rolls his arm in the air and cheers in that weird language he slips into sometimes. Hidemune bows elegantly enough, but tries to sheathe his shinai and forgets it doesn’t have a sheath. He laughs with all the people laughing at him, though. I wish I could do that sometimes. But it’s better just to not do anything that people will laugh at you for, isn’t it?

I miss the second match because I’m suiting up, but my turn comes quickly. The master-at-arms calls Mitsukaga first. He’s older and bigger than I am, probably not going to be a page for much longer, and he won three months ago.

Like I’m going to let that stop me.

He comes at me with an overhand as soon as we’re allowed. I block, tilt my shinai just enough that we don’t bind, sweep out from under it on the side he shouldn’t expect. His sword crashes through where I was a second ago and I don’t have much time, but I should get him in the back while I still can and--damn. He parries. All right, new plan.

So I come at him from the left.

He expects it and parries, but at least I connect, and we wind up a whole reach apart, far enough that we both decide to get our bearings and make another pass. He thwacks the tip of his shinai against mine--I know it’s not a taunt, Mitsukaga doesn’t _need_ to taunt me, but it feels like one--and I barely manage not to charge right in and leave myself open.

You know, I think he did expect me to leave myself open, because he does it first.

I get him in the left side, a clean, fast, open cut with no ribs in the way. If these were swords I might have gotten all the way to his spine before any resistance.

My hand hurts a little from the recoil, but not enough to stop me from bowing when we’re told. I look for my father in the stands--he’s not by the board, he’s with Lord Masamune now, so that means I have to look at them both. Lord Masamune is whispering something up at my father, which means neither of them is cheering for me.

“Good match,” Mitsukaga says once we’re off the pitch.

I don’t tell him I should have thrown it. I can’t say it aloud.

The next two rounds are almost a blur: there’s a red haze at the corners of my eyes and it won’t go away no matter who I’m fighting, and both matches are quick. Yukinobu tells me that I’m going about it all wrong if I want Lord Masamune to get rid of me. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters right now except not being a coward and not being ignored.

And he can’t ignore me if I’m up against his son in the finals.

They give us a few minutes to rest before the last match. I’m not good at resting, but I try. Hidemune doesn’t make it easy, comes over to chat.

“How much you want to bet that the old men already have a bet going on us?”

“No bet,” I say. “Of course they do.”

Hidemune laughs, wrings a knot out of his shoulder. “You think mine’s got one with yours?”

I shake my head no. “My father won’t make a losing bet and he’s not allowed to bet against you.”

“Fighting words, Katakura.”

“We’re about to fight, so why shouldn’t I use fighting words?”

“You’ve got a point.” He laughs again, and gets in my face, just to show he’s as big as me even if he’s younger. “So I’ll say a few too. Eat shinai, Katakura.”

Maybe I’d laugh with him some other day, but I’m not feeling it right now.

They call the match not long after that.

Hidemune faces me across the pitch, shinai out at his side in only one hand. I level mine and wait, and don’t dare look at the stands, not even for a second.

We spring off at the same time and meet in the middle, get into the same bind that he fooled Yukinobu with three rounds ago. I won’t get caught, bring my shinai up to parry him away from my head and send him spinning right back the other way. He has to gather himself after that, but so do I, but I can’t let it take too long--he’s coming at me again from the same side, and if I know Hidemune at all it means he’s going to try the same strike.

I can’t block it the same way. But I don’t have any time to think of a new way, so I just duck. His shinai whizzes over my head, gets caught in my ponytail on the way around, which pulls a few strands right out and yanks me to my knees.

The master-at-arms doesn’t know whether to call foul or not, be he does pause the match and make Hidemune stand back. “Fix your hair, Shigenaga,” he says, and I obey.

I take my helmet off and hand it over. This is not how I wanted everyone to look at me, so I wind up my hair as quickly as I can in a folded tail instead of a loose one because it’s clearly too long, and tuck it down the back of my armor.

Lord Masamune isn’t the only one watching me, but I do hear him speak. It’s in that weird language, though, and all I know is that it’s one of the filthy words, and then the name he calls my father.

I shove my helmet back on so I don’t have to hear that anymore.

The master-at-arms says, “If you were playing for points you’d both be docked and if this were war you’d be disarmed and you’d be dead. No more games, you two.”

“Yes, sir,” Hidemune says. I don’t say anything and just get into my stance.

Hidemune comes at me again. I block on the diagonal, shove down. It doesn’t knock him off his feet, but he skids on his heels and barely gets both hands on his sword in time. I wanted more but this’ll have to do, and I charge in, come at him from underneath with a backhand. He blocks it with the hilt.

Another bind. He’s going to weasel his way down and try to wind for the back of my head again, I’d stake anything on it, and I can’t let him--

He has his back to the stands. Lord Masamune is watching me, or watching us at least, but my father’s eyes are shadowed, down.

Hidemune doesn’t reverse his way out of the bind. He gets out of it the old-fashioned way, by ramming the hilt of his shinai into my hand. The bruise from earlier flares up, unwrings my grip. My shinai hits the dirt. Then my knees, when he whacks me on the head like he’s swatting a fly.

Everyone cheers for Lord Masamune’s son, of course. I would too, if the world weren’t red and spinning.

***

The prize for second place--not counting the bandages on my wrist and the goose-egg on my head--was half of a thick leather hide, big enough to have any number of things made out of: new bracers and greaves for me, probably, since my old ones are wearing out. It’s too late in the day for me to take it to the armorer, so I’ll do it in the morning after drills. For now, I sit on one of the front porches with it, looking up the cliff where my father has his garden.

If I had to save my life by growing a single vegetable, I’d be dead in a ditch. I tried to keep up with my father for a whole year, helping him out, learning what herbs can coexist, how much space to allot to which vegetable, how to tell if a fruit is ripe. I studied as hard as I could, and I still remember all the facts, but I can’t make anything grow. I had to endure his disappointment week after week when my little plot of land turned up nothing, when the weeds spread from my gourds to his, when a blight wiped out the squash. He said it was probably just a bad year, bad luck, bad choice, but all I heard was _bad_ and I don’t garden anymore. Besides, he probably wants his privacy. Gardening’s about the only thing Lord Masamune lets my father do alone.

I move the hide off my lap, stretch my legs. My father didn’t even speak to me after the match. He’s always been good about it in the past, even if I haven’t done anything worth congratulating. Not today. There must have been work to do. There’s always work to do. And it looks like I’m looking forward to a life of the same.

Toshichiyo, one of the youngest of the pages, runs out of the house and bows to me. “Senpai, the boss wants you to wait on him in his quarters.”

“Right now?”

He nods vigorously. “Right now. I don’t think it’s an emergency, but he just sent everyone else away.”

I nod, find my shoes where I left them next to the stairs, and hand off the hide to Toshichiyo. “Can you take this to my trunk?”

“Sure!”

Once I’m at the main house, and tell the two night guards what my business is, they let me in no question. Maybe I didn’t have to throw the match to make Lord Masamune disappointed in me. Maybe all I had to do was lose dramatically to his son.

I knock. “That you, Shigenaga?”

“Yes, Lord Masamune.”

“C’mon.”

I slide the door open, make a proper bow. As long as he’s getting rid of me at last I might as well be grateful.

“Shut the door,” he says. I do that too, and look up once I’d ordinarily be allowed.

I see his armor before I see him. It’s set up, seated in the most prominent place like an emperor or a priest. I’ve seen him in it often enough before, but it seems even more imposing sitting there without a face, gauntlets folded without arms. Lord Masamune himself is standing by one of the paper walls, idling with one of his swords on the display nearby. No, it’s not one of his swords, it turns out--I’d know the device on the crossguard anywhere. It’s one of my father’s.

He snaps it shut, looks me over, smirks. “You don’t have to kneel.”

So I stand. He’s still holding the sword. Of course he has every right to handle my father’s weapons. That doesn’t mean I have to like it, and I don’t.

“You’re what now, sixteen?”

“Yes, Lord Masamune.”

“You’ve come a long way,” he says, with a curl to his mouth like he approves, and taps my father’s sword in his palm. “C’mere, show me.”

“Lord Masamune?”

He rolls his eyes, offers the sword to me hilt-first.

Oh.

I draw it. It’s longer than I’m used to, but doesn’t hit Lord Masamune in the face when I assume a cross-stance. He stands, lets his eyes scroll over me. I’m not sure I like the way he looks at me--something hot creeps down from the base of my brain and settles in my gut, and everything pulls my shoulders tense. But this is my father’s sword in my hands, one that I’m supposed to accept after he’s gone, and even if my hand is injured I hold on tight.

Lord Masamune says, cool as anything, “Show me what you’ve got.”

So he wants a demonstration. I give him one. I move through forms, balance the blade on the air. I’ve worked with heavier but not easily, not gracefully, and I’m not sure I’m graceful now, but I don’t pull my strikes, dig my heels into the floor to keep from sliding. I will the pain out of my wrist. I show him the stances I’ve mirrored since my father started training me when I was six, the same ones I drill every morning and every night. I guess this counts for tonight’s, but I can’t treat it like a drill with Lord Masamune’s eye on me.

The sword is long enough--or I’m short enough, I guess--that the tip scrapes the floor once when I turn it too low. But I don’t let go, don’t stop.

He circles me. I wish I could say I don’t stall, but I do once he starts to move. I swear for a moment he has claws and teeth, that he’s thinking of me as prey.

“Not bad,” he drawls. “So why’d you lose?”

I slice through the air once more, then drop my guard. “Because your son beat me, Lord Masamune.”

“Hidemune’s not as good as you yet,” Lord Masamune says. “He’s got a couple of good moves and you caught him in the same one twice, it shouldn’t have gotten you the third time.”

“I got distracted,” I say.

“By what?”

I don’t want to tell him and I shouldn’t have to.

“’Cause if you’re telling me you threw the match--”

“I _didn’t throw the match,_ ” I say, because Kikuhime is a goddamn tattletale, and I am immediately conscious of the sword in my hand.

Shit. No. No, I want to get sent away, not _executed_. I lean the sword into the floorboards so that I don’t even think about raising it against the daimyo I’m supposed to serve. Too late, I’m thinking about it.

Lord Masamune stops circling me, drums the sheath against his palm and whistles once through his teeth. “Good.” And then he holds out his hand to take the sword back.

I give it to him hilt-first, like I should. He sheathes it, leans it against the leg of his mounted armor, and doesn’t stop looking at me.

I don’t stop looking at him either.

“Has Kojuro talked to you yet?” he asks.

“No,” I say. “He’s gardening.”

He scoffs. “Leave it to Kojuro to put this off for leeks.”

“So you _are_ getting rid of me.”

“Who said anything about getting rid of you?” He laughs, but it’s more like a huff, like steam could curl out of his nostrils. “You’re a Katakura. You’re mine. I don’t give away what’s mine. **Got it**?”

“I understand,” I say, because understanding doesn’t mean accepting.

“Come back tomorrow night.”

That sounds like a dismissal, so I bow and back up. “Yes, Lord Masamune--”

He takes me by the chin again, like he did the first day we spoke. His hand is rough even if the gesture isn’t--if anything, I’m tenser than he is. Maybe that’s why it’s so easy for me to jerk away.

He only has one eye to look into, but somehow I feel it on both of mine.

***


	2. Chapter 2

My father isn’t feeling well.

He doesn’t let it show, but I know the signs. When he comes to oversee us at the morning drills, he doesn’t sheathe his sword between demonstrations. There’s sweat on his forehead. He stands when the rest of us kneel.

He still hasn’t talked to me, even though Lord Masamune said he was supposed to. He’s definitely sick.

After he and the master-at-arms dismiss us, my father goes to his garden on the hill again. He always brings fresh vegetables to the kitchens to help with lunch. So he’ll be alone, and now’s as good a time as any. I follow him.

“Lending me a hand?” He doesn’t usually lean this much on his tools before he kneels.

I try not to show that I notice. “Yeah. I’m on my way to the kitchens anyway,” which is true, “and Lord Masamune said you had something to talk to me about.”

He stiffens, prying a leek out of the ground. “I do,” he says, “but this isn’t the place.”

“All right.” I pick up one of the baskets, hold it out to him. “So I’ll take these to the kitchens, and bring lunch to your rooms and we’ll talk there.”

He nods, and starts parceling up the vegetables. I don’t touch them--for all I know I’d kill them--but it’s peaceful just standing here with him for a while, even if I know there’s something he’s not saying.

“When did Lord Masamune tell you that we had something to talk about?” he asks, once the basket is full.

“Last night. He called me in.”

He gives one more look at the rest of the garden, and starts to get to his feet. I know he doesn’t want help, but I hold out a hand anyway. I’m not offended when he doesn’t take it.

After he gathers a few more herbs and puts them in the basket with the vegetables, I shoulder the basket, bow, and turn to go. “So I’ll see you in an hour.”

“Shigenaga.”

I stop. “Yes, father?”

“What do you think of Lord Masamune?”

I know what answer he wants, but I can’t quite look him in the eye to give it to him. “Lord Masamune is my daimyo and I serve him as I am meant to.”

Surprisingly, he says, “I understand,” in the same tone I used last night.

I drop the vegetables off at the kitchens, wait around while the cooks thank me. The oldest of them pats me on the head, tells me to keep my hair out of the food. I bind it back again, and she tells me and one of the apprentices a story of how my father once repelled a Tokugawa raid, because the shogun (who wasn’t the shogun yet then, he must have been about my age) sent his strongest warrior right to Kojuro’s garden and he trampled a corner of the harvest.

“Is it true he fought with a leek when the big guy disarmed him?” the apprentice asks.

“You’d have to ask him,” the cook says, then turns to me. “Or you, I suppose. Do you know?”

“It’s the first I’ve heard of it,” I say, truthfully.

“Lord Kojuro’s no man to brag,” the cook says. “But there’s nothing he wouldn’t do to defend Sendai. If the boss is the heart of Date, Lord Kojuro’s the ribs that keep it safe.”

The apprentice claps her hands around the rice she’s supposed to be pounding. “Is Lord Kojuro gonna teach us spears again today?”

\--That’s right, my father is supposed to run defensive maneuvers with the peasants before sunset tonight. He does that once a week, because the peasants don’t have time for much more than that. But I remember the sweat on his forehead this morning, how he didn’t take my hand to help him stand.

“I’m doing that today,” I say without thinking. “Once everyone’s back from the fields, right?”

“No, he said something about catching everyone after lunch. That must be why. Is it true?”

I think quickly. I’m not used to lying, really lying anyway. “Yes, that’s why he sent me here too. Once lunch is done, could you send someone to him with it? And I’ll go get set up for the drills.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” the cook says, and the apprentice cheers, “Shigenaga-sensei! Shigenaga-sensei!”

I try not to think about how much trouble I’ll be in.

***

I start without him. Thirty-eight peasants show up, most of them older than I am, but no one questions a senior page or the son of a lord and pretty soon I have them lined up, going through forms. I’ve watched my father do this for years. I know it by heart.

Some of the peasants in the front row struggle to match me. It takes me a couple of cuts to realize that I’m doing it backward, to them--they’re used to mirroring my father, who really does do it backward. I can’t switch off my hands as well as he can, but I do try. It’ll be easier to turn my back on them and do the same thing, so after the first few cuts of each form, I turn my back and do it with them, not just for them.

After the fifth form, crouch-and-brace, I catch Kikuhime, two of her littlest sisters, and Irohahime watching us from the riverbank. Irohahime points and asks, “Did Kojuro shrink?”

“No, it’s just Shigenaga,” Kikuhime says. “See?” Oh, great, now she’s disappointed in me too. And she’s going to tell on me, which will make it worse--even though I know I’ll be in trouble for this when my father finds out, Kikuhime’s not going to tell my father. She’s going to tell Lord Masamune. She always does.

But it’s too late to stop now.

“He’s too big to be Shige,” Irohahime says.

“Well he’s not good enough with a spear to be Kojuro,” Kikuhime says.

\--what the hell. How dare she!

I move the peasants into the next form. Some of them snicker behind my back. I will not goad Kikuhime into coming down here. She _is_ better with a spear than I am, even if she probably doesn’t know pike tactics as well and _definitely_ isn’t as good with a sword, and there is no way I will let her show it.

“Oi!” Irohahime yells. Her father lets her get away with way too much. She shouldn’t be allowed to shout at men like that. “Oi, Kojuchiyo!”

Little Kojuro. The daimyo’s daughter just called me _Little Kojuro_.

And now all the girls are doing it, even Kikuhime. “Kojuchiyo! Kojuchiyo-sensei!” And since most of them are Sanada, good luck drowning them out.

I try anyway. “Come on, everyone,” I tell the peasants. “Let’s go on to coordinated maneuvers.”

They chorus, “Yes, sir!”, but a few of the younger ones tack on “Kojuchiyo!” at the end.

I can’t show them how much it pisses me off. I can’t. I shouldn’t. I won’t, I won’t, I--

“I will take over from here, Shigenaga.”

\--probably already have.

Irohahime cheers, “Kojuro!” and breaks away from the girls to wrap herself around my father’s legs. He pats her on the head, but doesn’t laugh, he’s too busy glowering at me.

I can’t say anything. No matter what I say it’s going to embarrass me in front of everyone and it’s better if my father does it than if I do it myself. But if I stand here and say nothing I can’t defend myself--and shouldn’t, I can’t say he looks tired in front of the men. I can’t make him look weak. I can’t _let_ him look weak.

“Thank you for starting on my behalf,” my father says. He shoos Irohahime away with one last pat on the head and takes one of the remaining spears. “Coordinated maneuvers, everyone!”

“Yes, sir!”

He catches my eyes, holds my attention without glaring. “Back to your post.”

Of course he can’t tell me I did well, especially if it’s a lie.

I bow and go. The peasants drill. Irohahime scampers back to the other girls, reaches up and tugs my ponytail on the way, hard enough to spin me around.

“Pretty Kojuchiyo,” she says, then erupts into laughter. So do the Sanada sisters, even Kikuhime.

I really wish I was allowed to fight with girls.

***

Lord Masamune said he expected me tonight, but didn’t say when, so I wind up waiting on the same porch as last night until dusk. My father hasn’t spoken to me for the rest of the day, and didn’t show up at training this afternoon. I really hope he got some rest. I doubt it.

Toshichiyo shows up around the time he’s really supposed to be in bed. He’s yawning when he tells me that Lord Masamune’s been waiting and I’d better hurry. I don’t, it’s too dark, but I don’t dawdle either. Looks like we’ll have a lot to talk about.

I knock, same as last night. “Just come in,” he says, like he doesn’t care who I am. But I do, and I kneel like I’m supposed to, and it would look the same as last night (except for the sword) if he weren’t glaring at me from the start.

“So,” he says. “How’d you like training the peasants?” It’s a taunt. I know that tone when I hear it. Hidemune does it all the time.

I answer as politely as I should, and stay on the floor since he hasn’t told me to get up. “I did my best, Lord Masamune.”

“Yeah, but how’d you get to do it? It’s your father’s job. Where was he?”

“He came later.”

“Stop dodging the question, kid. Why’d you start?”

“I’m not dodging the question.”

“ **Bullshit.** What the hell were you thinking?”

“He was tired.” I don’t mean to spit when I say it. “He was tired and you didn’t care.”

He laughs at me, low, short. The back of my neck heats up. “I didn’t care,” he repeats, “well, fancy that.”

“You didn’t.” Forget politeness. Forget everything. I’m done. “Either you couldn’t see it or you didn’t care or--”

“Shut up until you know what the hell you’re talking about.”

I look up from the floor. Even if I planned to say anything, I don’t think I could, not with how he’s looking at me. I shut my mouth, even clamp my back teeth down.

“If Kojuro’s sick you have to tell me,” Lord Masamune says. “You can’t just go around covering for him. I have to know. It’s my problem more than it’s yours, and if you make it look like he’s sick when he isn’t it becomes everyone’s problem.”

No. No, that has nothing to do with why it’s important, and it’s untrue. “I did a good job,” I say, “and I did something good for him, which is more than I can say for you!”

His teeth are so sharp that they look more like a rock face than a line when they’re bared. “I told you to shut up until you know what the hell you’re talking about. I’ve done everything for your father since you weren’t even a speck in his balls. And he means more to me than you’ll ever know unless you’re really damn lucky.”

That heat on the back of my neck is flaring up, spreading. I know what it is and it’s dangerous and all I can do is not let it turn into words, or fists, or anything else I know I’ll regret.

“So how was it,” he asks, and it’s a taunt just like before. “You get what you wanted, or did you dig yourself deeper?”

I barely keep “Shut up,” to a whisper, not a shout.

“Get one compliment from me and you think you’re a big man now, **that it?** ”

Please, please Lord Masamune, I don’t want to do something stupid. “Shut up.”

“’Because from where I’m standing, you’ve got more balls than you got brains--“

“Shut up, shut up--“

“--and not enough of anything else to back it up.”

“Shut up, you asshole!” I’m on my feet, in his face, and I wish I had a damn sword right now because he deserves it. “Shut up and go to--“

He grabs me by the chin and kisses me.

I think I keep shouting for a second, because my mouth is open. His tongue is hot and his teeth are sharp and it’s different than kissing the servant girls, harder, defter. I don’t even know who it is for a moment, just that it’s on and in my mouth, sucking on my lower lip, pressing roughly at the corner.

Lord Masamune is kissing me. Insulting me, then kissing me.

The heat in my throat tightens it so much that I can’t breathe.

I don’t break away: he lets me go, loosens his grip on my jaw but doesn’t pull back completely. He looks down at me, and I focus on his eye. I’ve never seen it this close. It laughs before his mouth does.

“Heh.” I can feel his breath on my lips. It’s hot. They’re cold. “Guess that’s as good a way to ask as anything.”

“What?” There’s a snap in my voice and I didn’t put it there. It’s too soft to be angry. I think I still am, I just can’t feel it under everything else.

He thumbs at my lips again. “Stay awhile,” he says. “Let me get you off.”

“ _What?_ ”

“I’ve been thinking about making you my wakashu.” He lets go of my chin, taps his fingers on my neck and then flicks them to the side, swats some of the hair off my shoulder. “You’re old enough, I’ve got a lot to teach, and you’ve got a dragon in you. So lets give it a shot. If you like it, stick around. How about it?”

Nothing in this world has ever shut me up as effectively as that.

He keeps looking, waits for me to answer. I can’t. I don’t know. But then his teeth come out again, that edged smile, and he laughs, steps back. “All right, think about it for a minute. Let’s get you some water.” He goes to the corner and ladles it himself, brings it to me. I take the ladle and drink it all. “Heh, maybe I should just dunk your head in the barrel.”

“Don’t,” I say.

“You got questions?”

“Yeah. Why me?”

“I thought I said it,” he says. “I like your spirit. I think you can pick up what you ought to from this. And you’re easy on the eyes. I want to see the rest.”

“What about my father?”

“Kojuro was supposed to bring it up with you. Guess he didn’t, but I can’t blame him. Hell, I’d have a hard time telling my son that the daimyo wants to fuck him.”

I feel like my eyes are burning, like there are shards in the corners. “And if I don’t want to?”

“You go back to your post and we don’t ever speak of this again. You can even stop halfway through if you want--it’ll suck, but I’ll get it.”

His wakashu.

I look down at the ladle in my hand. I took it with my left, like my father would have. I wasn’t even thinking.

I drop it. “Lord Masamune.”

He shoves it aside with his foot. He’s close enough to kiss me again. “Is that a yes or a no?”

I should look him in the eye when I say it. If I don’t, I don’t mean it. “We’ll try tonight.”

“That’s what I want to hear,” he says, and winds his hand through my ponytail to kiss me again.

It’s just as intense, as sharp, as before. This time, I hold on. He’s not that much broader than me, and I’m not sure where I’m supposed to put my hands, but when I’ve kissed girls I’ve held their waists so I do that here, and I have to hold on to _something_ since he’s plying my mouth so hard that I can barely stand. I’m not sure what he tastes like but it’s not bad, and I kiss him the way I’ve kissed those girls, the way that made that one of them let me go farther than that.

“Yeah,” Lord Masamune murmurs, “a little harder. C’mon.” He bites my lower lip, works it in his teeth, sucks it like it’s soft enough to drink. He says something more in the other language, and this close I can’t tell what he means but it’s probably filthy.

Right. This isn’t just about kissing, it’s about learning from him, following what he does. I kiss harder, how he tells me to, knead his lip in mine. He presses his tongue to my teeth, pulses it, guides me. There. Like that. He doesn’t have to say it, and I know it’s working from how close our bodies are and how tight his hand is in my hair.

It’s working for me too.

He peels down the shoulders of my gi, bows his head to my neck, kisses my throat more like it’s a dog-fight than--than whatever this is. His eyepatch is nestled right under my chin and his mouth is searing, and when his teeth scrape my collarbone of course I jump back, it’s an attack, but he’s got me by the hair and the clothes and I don’t get far.

“You done?” he asks, right into my skin.

“No,” I say, because it’s true, “just didn’t expect that.”

He nods, lets his fingers out of my hair to start getting my clothes off in earnest. He starts at the knot of my hakama, brushes the backs of his hands against my groin--I’m really doing this, aren’t I. This. Being his wakashu. “What’ve you gotten up to?”

“Huh?”

My hakama hit the floor. I feel like my legs should be cold, but they’re not, nothing is. “You had your way with any girls?”

Oh. “No.” If he’s taking my clothes off, should I do the same with his? I move my hands to undo his sash, but don’t start. “Just kissed a few, one let me touch her.”

“Touch her where?”

“Her breasts.”

“You’re not gonna find any of those in here, but it’s mostly the same,” he says. And then he makes me drop my arms so the gi slips off too. It’s not as if no one’s ever seen me naked before, but not naked and flushed and not like this, and not him.

And this is how he looked at me at the tournament yesterday. This is what he was hoping to see.

“ **Shit,** ” he says, and even if we aren’t kissing anymore I still feel it on my lips, like it’s part of the swelling. “Anyone ever tell you you’re gorgeous?”

I don’t think I’ve ever been aroused and pissed off at the same time before. I might like it. I know the part of me that’s aroused does.

But before I can act on it, he grabs my behind and works his leg between mine, and it’s better to feel that than be angry. I ride his thigh before it occurs to me to be embarrassed--I have to get on tiptoe to do it because the angle’s awkward but he’s practically lifting me anyway. I’d think his hands were claws if I didn’t know better.

His nails bite into me, and then his mouth finds my neck again, and I keep moving. He’s hard under his clothes, hard and at least as hot as I feel, and that pushes against me every time I grind forward. I think he’s leaving marks on my throat but I don’t care, not right now, except maybe that I’d like to do the same to him if I could concentrate. I can’t. I can’t do anything but ride and hold on.

I think he notices. I think my cheeks must be as red as I am down there.

“C’mon,” he says, but doesn’t really give me a choice, and hauls me over to the futon, lays me out. My hair is uncomfortable under my head, right on the band of the ponytail, and I move to adjust it but he gets there first. Somehow his thumb winds up close to my mouth. “Let’s see how you **party,** ” he says, and slips it in.

It’s pretty clear he wants me to kiss it, so I do--and only remember how he wanted me to kiss before after it’s in my mouth. I look him in the eye, tighten my lips, knead like I did with his lips. He smiles, and his eye fogs, and I think I’m doing something right.

“You’re a natural,” he says. I bite. “Ha. Try two.”

His forefinger and middle finger are rougher than his thumb, chapped at the tips and sharply cracked where they join. The longer one trips the back of my throat when I take it in, but shouldn’t cough, so I tighten up instead and keep them from going deeper.

His other hand idles on my chest, scratching up and down my sternum. “ **Easy there.** Make a choice, either suck or use your tongue. Try both, see what works.”

All right. I try my tongue first, which gets me an idea of just how much I’ve got in my mouth, and he spreads his fingers so I can get between them. I’ve never thought of calluses as having a taste but I think his do, especially around the central knuckle, and they’re as hard as the bone underneath. I try to keep looking him in the eye to see if I’m doing it right but it’s hard to stay focused, and then it’s impossible once his other hand pinches me, frames my right nipple and clamps in. That, I don’t like, and I thrash to throw him off. But it drives Lord Masamune’s fingers deeper into my mouth and I tighten again, suck instead of tongue, and I think he gets that I didn’t mean to stop everything. He puts his hand on my hip instead of my chest, and the sharpness is less awkward there, more urgent. I think I want it nearer.

I manage to keep my eyes open long enough to seek his out again. He’s looking at me the way I wish everyone’d looked at me yesterday at the tournament. I know it sounds weird, but I almost don’t mind that it’s now instead of then.

Almost.

“You want more?” he asks, and pulls his fingers out just so he can get a third one in. “Yeah, this’ll fill you up good. Bet you can’t wait to suck on something a little bigger, huh?”

I know what he means, and that he’s saying it aloud makes my eyes flash red at the corners. I bite down on his fingers, probably too hard, but he deserves it--he doesn’t take them out, just gasps, or laughs, I can’t tell anymore, and strokes the back of my tongue.

“Something you don’t like?”

“What you’re saying,” I say, and most of the words get out because I trap his fingers in my teeth and talk around them.

He raises his eyebrow, folds his hand around the inside curve of my thigh. “What, you don’t want to suck my cock?”

“It’s not that, I--” But even if I know it’s not that, I don’t know what it is, just that there’s something in his tone that grates on my nerves--and I’m not even sure I mind that part, I just want _something_ different, and--

“Not tonight, anyway,” he says, and rubs his fingers along my tongue again now that I’m not trying to speak. “You’re doing a pretty damn good job with these.”

I never thought I’d want to hear something like that. But I do, and _pretty good_ isn’t enough, and I grab his wrist and hold his hand in place so I can do better.

He tells me, “Don’t choke,” and slides his fingers into and out of my mouth, then wraps his other hand around my cock.

I don’t choke. But I startle so hard that my back leaves the futon and thuds back down.

No one else has ever jerked me off like this. Well, no one other than me has ever jerked me off at all. But Lord Masamune is fast, thorough, more forceful than I can be with myself in a shared room even if I know someone’s doing it three futons down. He works his hand up and down at just the right tightness and I cry out into his fingers, forget to suck, forget to cover my teeth.

“Fucking gorgeous,” he says, and I dig my fingers into his wrist, try to make him gasp instead of talk. He doesn’t gasp, but his breath comes short, and when I manage to look him in the eye again it’s glazed over, intent, as bright as his teeth.

I come so hard it takes me by surprise, with his fingers so deep in my mouth that I can’t breathe.

Lord Masamune withdraws everything at once. One of his hands is slick with my spit, the other with my come, and he looks between them with a grin wide enough to whistle through. He brings the hand streaked with white to his lips and cleans it off, looks me in the eye the whole time like he’s making a show of it and all that heat that must have been in my hips is climbing up to my face at the sight.

His tongue darts in and out of his fingers, just like mine did on his other hand. “You want a turn?”

I have no idea what’ll come out of my mouth if I try to speak, so I just nod and reach for the knot of his hakama again. This time he lets me undo them, sits up on his knees to let them drop and kicks them aside, and then undoes his kimono on his own. His body is paler than his face but just as defined, and his muscles stand out like patches of half-melted ice over hard earth. I try not to look too much, even if I’m jealous. He’s almost as well-built as my father even if he’s not as tall.

He takes my hand and guides it down. His cock is bigger than mine too, flushed more red than dark. I’ve never touched a man’s (fighting dirty with my friends doesn’t count), but it turns out not to be all that different, except the skin’s a little looser and there’s more hair at the base.

“It’s like you do to yourself, but backwards,” he says, and stretches out beside me.

I nod again, and get up on my knees like he did for me. It’s hard to keep my grip kneeling beside him, so I get closer, put one knee on either side of his thigh and brace myself there. He looks at that, scoffs like it amuses him. I tighten my fist.

It’s harder than it sounds to go backward. It’s the same as a sword grip, that I know, but deliberately moving it up and down on someone else is strange. I watch Lord Masamune’s face, try to gauge what works and what doesn’t the way he did for me. It’s easier said than done.

He arches his hips off the futon, pushes more into my hand--then takes it in one of his own and sets the pace himself, like my hand might not as well be there. “Here--”

I throw him off. “I can do it.”

“All right.” He withdraws his hand, but swats at my hair before he settles it on my thigh and leans back, waits. “ **Show me.** ”

It takes longer for him than it did for me but I don’t stop. I try everything, like I used to when I didn’t know what I was doing to myself--the tautness of my hands, the spread of my fingers, how fast and how tight and how much . I try holding on to his thigh, try kneading the soft skin behind his balls--that makes him twist up into my hand, so I do it again--try wrapping both hands around him so I can get everything at once. But the easiest rhythm, in the end, is the closest one to what he did to me, mirroring the pulse of his hips and matching it with my own. It takes that to notice that I’m swelling again, that I’m riding his thigh like before.

He curses in his other language when he comes, through my spread fingers and onto his stomach and chest. Even though he’s bigger, there’s about as much for him as there was for me. His body is a long pale arc off the futon, throat bared, hips and thighs pushed up against me, and I’m more aware of how hard I am than I want to be.

And then Lord Masamune stretches and laughs, and pushes his knee against my cock. “Yeah. Yeah, I want you to do this. **You in?** ”

I stare at my hands. But no matter the answer, I have to look him in the eye when I give it, and he has to look back.

“Yes,” I say, once I can get the word to leave my throat. “It would be my honor.”

“All right, time to get this party started.” He sits up, rakes his hand through my hair, and calls to the door for the guards outside. “Hey! One of you send someone to get Katakura Shigenaga’s stuff out of the pages’ quarters and bring it here. And some hot water and towels while you’re at it.”

“Yes, boss!”

Guards. Guards and a page. Guards and a page heard everything that just happened.

It gets cold in here so fast that my skin must be on fire.

Lord Masamune smirks at me. “Something wrong?”

“What?”

“You’re my wakashu. You’ll stay in here. Got a problem with that?”

Even if I did, I wouldn’t know what to say.

***

In the morning, a scrivener draws up a contract of fidelity and takes our oaths. I swear to serve Date Masamune, accept his judgment and instruction, ennoble him and represent him with honor, and carry on his will. Lord Masamune swears, in the kind of formal language he only uses at New Years and to throw people off, that he will instruct no other until I am grown, honor our friendship, and remain loyal unto death.

My father stands as witness. I try to look him in the eyes, but he doesn’t let me.

Then again, he doesn’t let Lord Masamune either.

***


	3. Chapter 3

Now that I’m sleeping in Lord Masamune’s room, I wake when he does. It surprises me that he’s up before the pages are, but then, he’s got more to do so it makes sense. Every morning, he lets me wash up first, so he can have an extra few minutes in bed. Then it’s his turn, and I squire him into his armor (however much of it he’s wearing that day) and he goes to breakfast with the senior retainers or whoever he needs to see that morning. Some days, I wait on him. The rest, I grab something on my own before morning drills. Those are business as usual, but if something funny happened the night before I feel like I’ve missed the joke, and there’s never time to catch up before Yoshinao starts putting us through our paces.

After two hours of drills, everyone else goes to their mid-morning posts, but I go to Lord Masamune and have another two hours or training, usually swordsmanship, sometimes riding. To put it bluntly, he spends the rest of the morning kicking my ass. He’s not nearly as patient a teacher as Yoshinao or my father, and hard as hell to trust even when he calls his attacks. And as for riding, well, I’m a really good racer, but thanks to him I’m starting to understand the difference between _really good_ and _legendary_. I can always taste dust in my rice at lunch. (And I can’t for the life of me explain why he has those pipes and handles on his horse when he doesn’t even hold onto them.)

I still eat lunch with the pages. I’m usually late. Yukinobu stopped saving me a place yesterday.

Lord Masamune holds court in the early afternoon. If he actually holds it (as opposed to a strategy meeting or disappearing somewhere with his horse), I’m there with him. It surprises me how much the peasants have to dispute: stolen livestock, marriage permissions, missing children, apprenticeships, conscriptions. Some of them come to Sendai from the farthest reaches of Oshu and have traveled for weeks, to report a blight on their rice or bandits in the mountains. Sometimes, he asks my father’s advice, but mostly I’m surprised with how easily Lord Masamune deals with their problems. And on the days when he isn’t there, my father is in charge, and it’s just like being at Shiroshi watching him deal with the servants.

I usually get some time to myself in the mid-afternoon, a little earlier than I’m used to. Sometimes I check in with my friends if they’re at posts or patrolling. Sometimes I’m just too tired to do anything but take a nap. If I wind up in Lord Masamune’s room alone, the junior page outside waits on me. Two days ago it was Toshichiyo, and he’s started calling me Lord Shigenaga instead of Senpai. It’s weird, but he’s the only one of the pages who does it, so I don’t think he’s making fun of me.

Because I have the space before evening drills, I get there early and help set up. I feel like it makes up for everything else, and at least I get to talk to people. Evening drills are getting easier, but joking around with the other pages feels somehow wrong. I try not to be an asshole or a prude, but something doesn’t feel quite right, and I don’t want to get reprimanded along with Hidemune and Yorifusa and the biggest jokers, so I keep to the front and don’t mess around. I should suspect something, but I honestly don’t have the time.

I’ve been invited to the men’s baths three times now. The first time I was honestly afraid that Lord Masamune would, well, do something in front of everybody, but nothing’s happened, and really it’s just like the pages’ baths except the gossip is more political and the jokes are even cruder. The other day, Lord Magobei told the story about how he and Yoshinao and one other lord were held hostage by an arms dealer, and my father charged in to fight him while Kikuhime’s father and his ninja cut them loose. But I never got to hear the end of the story, because it turned into a conversation about the Tokugawa court and who is and isn’t administrating it and where the hell the Takeda armor got to. But I can always ask again.

I attend to Lord Masamune before, during, and after dinner. The senior retainers take much more time with dinner than we pages do, probably because they drink so much. If any of their wives or concubines are here, or if there are courtesans, there’s entertainment too. I don’t sit at the board, just behind it in the shadow of Lord Masamune’s seat at the head, but I get to see and hear just about everything.

And after that, my father goes off to garden, and Lord Masamune takes me to bed.

It’s been three weeks. Something happens every night. _Every_ night. He must miss his wife--she’s in Yamagata right now, since she’s too pregnant to travel, he says--or else I just have a lot to learn. It’s probably both. But every night we both get off, in my case sometimes twice, and he doesn’t stop saying such crude things and I don’t stop getting angry but he seems to prefer it that way.

A week ago, he threaded his hand through my hair and taught me how to take his cock into my mouth, tried to guide me the same way he tried to guide my hand the first time. I told him (as much as I could tell him anything like that) that I could do it on my own. He believed me. By the end, he was still holding onto my hair, but not to guide me. Making him come like that honestly felt like beating someone in a duel for the first time, or like lapping someone in a race, being assured of victory. I couldn’t swallow. I’m still working on that.

This morning, we rode. I didn’t catch up, but I never lost sight of him. It counts for something.

***

There’s been no indication that he wants me in the men’s baths, so I go with the pages instead after evening drills.

“Fuck that overhand cut. I feel like my shoulder’s going to explode.”

“Did Yoshi-sensei have to be such a dick today?”

“It’s only ‘cause we had an audience.” Mitsukaga says. He’s ahead of us, and taller, and throws a bunch of towels back to the rest of us. I catch one, hand it to Hidemune. Yukinobu snags one of the low-fliers in midair.

“An audience?”

“Did you see the blacksmith’s daughter watching us?” someone says by the buckets. “Man, she’s getting round on top!”

“Yeah,” Hidemune says, above the others, “and in back!”

It’s almost like normal, at least right now. It’s so much like normal that it’s strange to consider that it wouldn’t be, and I know that sounds backwards but it makes sense in my head.

The baths are carved into the mountainside, hot without stones even in the winter. The men’s bath is two panels upstream, and if I strain I can hear them over what my friends are going on about, over Hidemune working the knots out of his shoulder and Mitsukaga trying to prevent one of the younger pages from swimming under the divider. I scrub off with soap at of the buckets--Yoshinao really did push us today, and I’m still sore from this morning’s ride--then knot up my hair on top of my head and get into the water. I don’t mean to sigh as loud as I do, but hot water is exactly what I need right now.

Yukinobu is staring at me. “Whoa, Shige, where’d you get those?”

“Those what?”`

He points at my right hip. Deep purple bruises stand out around the bone. Lord Masamune bit me there last night when he was jerking me off.

I sit down as quick as I can to cover them up in the water, and I’d better not be blushing more than any of the other guys. “Probably training.”

He doesn’t buy it. And now he’s looking at my throat, and I know there are bruises there too. “Training,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. But I’m not the best liar in the world, and shit, my face is giving me away.

One of the older guys, Yorifusa, whistles through his teeth like I’m a girl passing by with her kimono hiked up. “You get that from the boss, or what?”

“I’m not training with anyone else,” I say before I can think of something smarter. Damn.

And now no one’s talking about anyone else, or looking at anyone else, and I feel like my skin is going to explode.

“What’s it like?” Katsunosuke, one of the younger pages, asks.

“What, training? Training’s the same as what we all do, except he does it.” I wish I could sink into the water and cover everything up but I wouldn’t be able to talk if I did that and then everyone would think I’m embarrassed and I shouldn’t be. I can’t let them see it.

“No, not the training,” Katsunosuke says. “Being with the boss. What’s it like?”

Daimitsu snickers and splashes at the water. “Mitsukaga says you do girl things with him.” 

“I do not!”

“And that’s not what I said,” Mitsukaga clarifies from the other side of the bath. He adds, to me, “I didn’t think he’d understand it if I didn’t explain it that way.”

“Thanks,” I say, and don’t mean it, though I should probably thank him for trying. And I’m about to, when Yukinobu butts in.

“They’re not ‘girl things’,” he says. “They’re things you usually do with girls. Like kissing and stuff. Only the boss is doing them with Shige instead.”

I’m not sure that makes it sound much better, but if that’s how he’s going to explain things to his little brother, I can only hope it works.

“Oh,” Daimitsu says.

“See, I told you he’s not a girl!” Katsunosuke say at the same time. “You can’t just turn into a girl.”

I remind myself that they’re eleven years old.

“But why are you kissing the boss?” Daimitsu asks.

“Because he’s the boss’s wakashu, dumbass,” Yorifusa says. “That’s what wakashu do. The boss teaches him everything.”

Even the ones who don’t say “ _Everything?_ ” aloud are saying it with their eyes.

“Ev-ery-thing.” Yorifusa gets out of the water, stretches his arms above his head like he’s showing off, and of course he’s showing off, he’s the shogun’s son and he’s only paging here because he’s the eleventh and so far down in the pecking order that there’s no room for him at court. He thinks he knows everything and everybody. It’s hard to convince the younger pages otherwise when there’s no way to get proof. “It’s the high life. My big brother was Lord Kato’s wakashu and he says Lord Kato’ll do anything for him if he’s good in bed.”

I sit on my fists so I don’t have to swing them. “Shut up, Yorifusa.”

“What, the boss doesn’t say that to you? Didn’t you sign an oath and stuff?”

Daimitsu laughs. “You signed an oath? Cool!”

I’d rather answer him than let Yorifusa go on, but Yorifusa goes on without me. “Maybe the boss isn’t a good enough lay to make that worthwhile. Is the boss a good lay, Shige?”

“Shut _up_ , Yorifusa.”

“My old man says he isn’t.”

“Your old man is a fat asshole.”

“How’s the boss like your asshole? Is it _gorgeous?_ ”

Forget sitting on my hands, Yorifusa needs to die.

I lunge across the bath at him, and the water slows me down but not enough to save his damn face. I don’t hold off punching him into the rocks and he doesn’t block, so that gives me the chance to hit him again, I don’t care where. He curses and ducks under the water and grabs my knees, but at least I know where he is to kick him, though that’s almost impossible underwater and when he comes up he swings straight for my chin and I don’t have a hand to block.

Someone curses in my ear and lifts me from behind, and I elbow back at him and kick at everything but nothing lets go. Hidemune’s got Yorifusa shoved into the wall by the throat and Yukinobu has him around the waist, and he looks about as ready to keep this going as I feel but damn it, who’s behind me?

Oh. It’s Mitsukaga. And he says, “Just calm down, Shige. He doesn’t get it.”

“Like fuck I don’t get it!” Yorifusa laughs. “I get it just fine, I just think it’s hilarious that the boss only gets it up for kiss-ass Katakura like that!”

I kick back to try and get his gut and yell at Mitsukaga to let me go. At least I think that’s what I say. I’m not sure where the words are coming from.

“Shut your face, Tokugawa,” Hidemune snarls, struggling to hold him down, “that’s my father you’re talking about and it’s gross.”

Yorifusa keeps laughing. “Everyone does it!”

“Yeah but I don’t want to hear about my father and Shige, so shut your fucking face.”

He does. He’s bleeding. I might have broken his nose. I regret nothing.

***

Instead of waiting on Lord Masamune at dinner, I lie in his room with a hot cloth on my backside, covering the welts. Yoshinao gave Yorifusa twenty lashes. I got twenty-five. I haven’t been caned like that for two years. Yoshinao doesn’t hit nearly as hard as my father, but twenty-five is the most I’ve ever gotten and the difference between fifteen and twenty-five is much more painful than you’d think.

Guess it’s something special to break the shogun’s kid’s nose.

Someone knocks. It’s Lord Masamune’s room, but I’m the only one in it, and it doesn’t feel right telling whoever it is to come in, so I say nothing. Whoever it is comes in anyway, shuts the door behind him, and sets something down beside me.

“Yorifusa-senpai is a jerk,” Toshichiyo says. He’s got a tray with him, with a few bottles and fresh towels on it, and he leaves it next to me.

I smile up at him. “Thank you.”

“The boss treats you nice,” Toshichiyo says with a faint blush across his nose. “I tried to tell Yorifusa-senpai that, but he just kept asking me about what you do and laughing at me when I tried to tell him. He just kept laughing. I think I made it worse. I’m really sorry, Lord Shigenaga.”

Great, now I’m blushing too. But he tried to do the right thing and I shouldn’t be hard on him.

I reach out and pat his hand. “It’s fine. Thanks for sticking up for me.”

He brightens, and uncorks the bottles. “These aren’t for drinking, okay? Though I can get you some tea if you want it.”

“That would be great, thanks.”

I guess since I’ve gotten used to him calling me Lord Shigenaga, I should get used to him bowing. But something doesn’t feel right about that either, especially laid out how I am right now.

He comes back in a few minutes with tea, this time without knocking first. I can’t quite sit up enough to drink, but I turn onto my side and manage that way, and he leaves, bowing again, once he’s sure I can manage.

Lord Masamune comes in a few minutes after that, just when I’ve set the empty cup down. He doesn’t knock. He shouldn’t. It’s his room.

“Well, look at that,” he says. It’s not lewd, but it’s still definitely a joke to him and one I don’t find funny.

“Lord Masamune,” I say, more to the futon than to him, and not that sincerely. “I apologize for being unable to attend you at dinner.”

“No hard feelings.” He sits beside me, on the same side of the futon with the tray of bottles and the empty teacup. “That little shit had it coming. ‘Course I can’t smack him around myself, and if you do hit him you’ve got to deal with the consequences, but heh, looks like you figured that out good.”

“You’re not mad at me?”

“No, I’m pissed off, just not about that. Go ahead, punch that little Tokugawa punk out if he ruffles your feathers. Not like his father’s gonna do it, right?” He flicks his fingernail against one of the loose corks. “But it’s better not to lose your cool at all, at least not to someone like that.”

I turn my face into the futon and try not to groan. “Control my temper, huh.”

He laughs. “Like I can teach a Katakura to do that. Nah. Just save it for when you mean it.”

“I meant to break his face.”

“Yeah, but was it worth it?”

I don’t answer, but he doesn’t ask again.

He peels the cloth off my backside--it’s not warm anymore, he’s probably just switching it out--and hisses through his teeth at the sight of the lashes. “ **Shit.** Looks like you can take a lot.” I don’t have anything to say to that either, but that means there’s no sound in the air but the faint click of one bottle against another, I crane up to look, but he’s already pouring whatever’s in one of them onto his hand. “You gonna twist yourself in half to watch?”

Oh. It’s medicine for the welts. I turn back to the futon and flatten myself into it facefirst. “No, it’s fine.”

The medicine doesn’t sting much. Not many of the weals are open, and the ones that are have already scabbed over, but the medicine undoes that and creeps under. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s a very raw feeling, and a little cold once the aloe--I think it’s aloe?--starts to work.

“Man, this takes me back,” Lord Masamune says. “Between my old man and Kojuro I must’ve got my ass tanned a thousand times when I was your age.”

“My father punished you?”

“Yeah, once or twice when my old man wasn’t here to do it. Let me tell you, your father hits less but he hits _hard_.”

I can’t help laughing into the pillow at that. “I know.”

“Not that he liked to do it, but, enh. I think that’s why he hits as hard as he does, so he--”

“--so he won’t have to do it twice,” I finish for him. “Right.”

“Yeah, like you shouldn’t have to shut that little Tokugawa shit up twice.” He kneads more oil into the cuts, smoothes the pad of his thumb along the edge of one long strike. “If you’re gonna do it, make it count.”

“Yes, your Lordship.”

For a few minutes, neither of us has anything to say. I relax into the futon and he keeps working at my skin, rubbing the medicine in until it’s more like a massage than treatment. There’s still strain, a kind of twinge at the deepest cuts, and I’ll probably still try to sleep on my front tonight, but mostly it just leaves my skin feeling cool and slick, like I’ve bathed in salt water instead of fresh. Sometimes Lord Masamune laughs to himself, or makes a faint humming noise just out of his throat, but it’s never loud enough that I think he wants something from me.

“Why did you take him on if you don’t like him?” I finally say, when he corks that first bottle and changes it for another.

“His old man and I go back,” Lord Masamune says. “We give each other shit, but Ieyasu’s still my friend and he’s still shogun. For now, anyway.”

There’s more to it that that, and I know it, but it’s not my place to bring it up. Everyone in Sendai knows that the Date clan should be running the country. Everyone knows that the shogun makes exceptions for Lord Masamune all the time--the castle I grew up in was one of them--and that if Lord Masamune stood against the shogun he’d have a good chance of taking over. We’re the strongest clan in Honshu and the biggest except for the Tokugawa, and that’s only because the Tokugawa absorbed so much in the last war and, well, the shogun has eleven sons by marriage so they’re only getting bigger every day. I don’t understand it yet, but someday I’ll have to, and if that means putting up with Yorifusa I’d better learn how fast.

Whatever is in the second bottle is more slippery than the first, and warmer. Lord Masamune’s hands knead harder, and instead of pain there’s this level feeling down my back, more like weight than hurt. It’s calming, and between the motion of his hands against me and my hips against the futon, the warmth spreads from my back to around front.

Maybe he won’t notice. Maybe he already has.

“Still,” I say, so he doesn’t look. “You can choose not to take him, can’t you?”

“Yeah, but he had to go somewhere.”

“He sounds like he wants to be back at court.”

He laughs. “You have that many sons, you can’t keep ‘em all at home. Ieyasu’s got a thing for bonds. If he keeps all the people holding the other ends of the ropes in Edo, he trips over them.”

I haven’t seen the shogun in person, but from what I’ve heard he’s a big man, and strong, so the sudden image of him tripping over string traps and falling over hogtied is ridiculous enough that I burst out laughing. It’s strange, to laugh with my hips held down, and--well. He’s noticed.

“ **Want to party?** ”

Instead of saying yes aloud--still too embarrassed, I guess--I just lower my head and try to turn over.

He doesn’t let me, stalls me with my hips to the futon. “Just relax,” he says, and goes back to work on my rear. Except this time he’s reaching past the bruises, into the crack and down.

Oh. That. His fingers are slick and warm and didn’t feel bad at all on the outside, but--

“Spread ‘em,” he says. “Just enough for my hand. Let’s see if you like it.”

I do. It takes some writhing against the futon, which only makes it harder to keep my hips down, but I do. I turn my head to the side and the blood in my face is pounding so hard I can hear it. His finger slips behind my balls, presses against the tightest part on the skin outside, and the oil drips down but it isn’t slimy or wrong, just warm. He traces his fingertip back along whatever that part is called and circles me where it’s even tighter and I can’t help tensing closed. I feel his finger trapped between my cheeks, as slick as my skin but out of my control.

“You ever done this to yourself?”

I can’t shake my head in this position, so I have to tell him. “Once, but I didn’t reach far.”

“You don’t have to,” he says. “You’ll see.”

He spreads me with one hand, clawed into my behind just to the side of the weals. The other--well, one finger of the other--he nudges in.

“Shit, you’re tight,” he says, all breath. That must be where my breath went, since it’s up short. “You’re gonna feel real good around me once we get going.”

“Lord Masamune--”

“Breathe. You’ve gotta let me in if you want to feel what I mean.”

I shut my eyes, rock my hips against the futon and try to concentrate on that, and that part feels better, less invasive. I don’t know how deep his finger is yet, but it feels like more every time I pull back. It’s not bad. It’s new. I think I like the stretch, it’s more like working a knot out of a stubborn muscle than anything else but that’s always felt good, even better after than during. 

It must be in all the way, because I feel his other knuckles pressed against me from outside, and then he starts to move, traces the walls. I can feel the difference between the flat of his nail and the rough pad of his finger when he twists it. They’re both good. This is getting easier. Better. I might want something more than the futon under my hips. I shouldn’t move them so fast.

“Starting to like it?” He keeps pace with me, stops tracing and moves in and out in time instead. I’m not moving much, but it’s enough, and at the apex the pad of his finger keeps rubbing against something that feels different, better, somehow sharper than the rest.

I think I say “Yeah” instead of _yes_ , but he’ll get it.

He laughs--I don’t think it’s malicious, just low, close enough to feel. “Yeah, you definitely are. Gonna tell me you can take more?”

His finger draws back to halfway but thickens, bends, right at that taut place in the wall. I’m not sure what I open my mouth to say, but only sound comes out.

There’s more now, a second finger, and yes, I can take more, I can definitely take more, I’d get up higher and let it in if I could bring myself to neglect my groin. I can’t imagine having nothing to touch in front even if everything else is happening _there_. Lord Masamune’s fingers work at the hardest place and I feel like he’s touching my balls from the inside and I need to keep going.

I lift my hips just enough to get a hand under, hold on and grind against it. This isn’t like trying to get off quick before anyone hears me even if the motion is the same, because his hand’s matching mine from the other side and what was just a pleasant stretch before is a hard ride now, spikes of heat that spread through my entire back and down into my cock and the hand around it. I know he’s saying something and I’d probably hate it if I could hear around the beat in my ears, but I think I respond to it anyway--something comes out of my throat, I don’t think it has words, but he keeps going and so do I. I want him to.

Of all things, I notice that my hair is plastered to the back of my neck. Then again, I only notice because he’s holding me by it now.

His fingers jab in, I struggle to hold on, and I’m done.

He lets go of me and slides his fingers out, but stays close, close enough that I know he’s taken the cloth from before and is cleaning his hands. I feel boneless and dizzy, facedown on the futon. I think I could sleep right here, stains and all. I wonder if he’ll let me.

“You’re gonna be a pleasure to fuck,” he says.

I can’t thank him. I can’t respond to that at all. I don’t know what I’d say. At least I have the excuse that I’m already falling asleep.

***

I wake up once, in the middle of the night, on his futon instead of mine. The medicine on my rear is dry, the cuts lightly stinging but not enough to distract me. Lord Masamune is asleep on my futon, and even in the dark I’m close enough to tell that he’s had the coverings changed, and then probably just gave up and slept there instead of moving me back. But the mats are close enough that there’s no difference, really, and the only change is which side of him I’m on.

He looks younger without the eyepatch. In the shadows, the old stitches around the socket could be mistaken for thick eyelashes.

***

You would think that he wouldn’t take me riding the day after I got caned.

You’d be wrong. But I keep my ass out of the saddle as much as I can, and keep him in my sight.

***


	4. Chapter 4

My father is not a man to brag, but some stories need an authoritative version and I’ve asked him for those. I’ve heard so many rumors and stories that I can’t be blamed for tugging on his sleeve and asking, _is it true, is it true?_

Since I came to Sendai, almost as soon as they know whose son I am, everyone has a story about him to tell me, or even to ask me to confirm because my father says so little about it. They ask if he’s only pretending to use the wrong hand so that he doesn’t look stronger than Lord Masamune. I tell them no, he cuts vegetables with that hand and writes with that hand and helped my mother out of carriages with that hand, and besides, he’d never lie. They ask if he really threw the Toyotomi strategist off a cliff after he escaped their prison. I tell them it happened before I was born and I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound like the honorable thing to do. They ask if he sleeps with his right eye open because he sees for Lord Masamune when he’s awake. I tell them that sounds like him, but I don’t think it’s possible.

They ask if he kept Lord Masamune’s eye when he cut it out. I know the answer now.

I’ve been Lord Masamune’s wakashu for over a month. It’s a little late for my father to ask me if I want to be, but not too late to discuss it, and he catches me at swordsmanship training with Lord Masamune on the same morning as a particularly hard rain. I almost don’t notice him watching, not until Lord Masamune is coming at me with three swords in one hand and I’ve only got the one to defend with. It’s lie being beaten at with wings or a sheet of ice, and there’s my father framed in the dojo’s wall, his shoulders stippled with rain, standing without leaning and watching me.

Lord Masamune comes at me from overhead and I parry, catch two of the three blades along mine and twist under the third. Sparks fly, ripple down to his hilts. He grins, lets me get back into my stance and cocks his head at my father. ”Oi, Kojuro. Want to keep score?”

“Is there any point?” he says.

“Enh, he’s scored a couple when it’s one to one. Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

I don’t care if he’s my daimyo, that’s unsportsmanlike and unfair, and I swat at his swords with mine to remind him I’m here. “Are we training or are you making fun of me, your Lordship?”

He laughs. At least I have both their attention again. “Fine. **Showtime.** Same pass, and make it good.”

I don’t even get in a good _yes, sir_ before he charges. There’s nothing to do but defend, move through the guards as fast as he can make me. He swings over, I block from beneath--he comes at me from the side, I brace to block, twist and reverse to catch him in a spun backhand three times as deadly as Hidemune’s and shift my weight. And then he reverses that, and that’s when I’m supposed to block again, but all that’ll do is get me stuck in this pattern and chip away at my sword and my strength.

I know it, but there isn’t time for anything else. I block this one like I’m supposed to, and the next, but the one after that I can only catch two of his blades and the third thwacks against the armor at my waist.

“Mine,” Lord Masamune says, lets me pull back and catch my breath. “Not bad. **You see** , Kojuro?”

“I saw,” my father says from the door. And then like he’s in charge instead of Lord Masamune, he looks me in the eye and says, “Again.”

I catch my breath and ready my stance. “Yes, sir.”

I feel him leave the wall and circle closer, on my side of the dojo--not within striking range, but enough that I know he’s talking to me and not Lord Masamune. “Think now so you don’t have to later. Why does he keep winning?”

Lord Masamune scoffs. “Hey, whose lesson is this, Kojuro?”

“I’m seeing something you aren’t.”

“Let him figure it out for himself.”

But the thought’s already took root: I’m losing not because I’m supposed to, but because I haven’t figured out how to win.

_Think now, so you don’t have to later._ He’s always told me to clear my mind when I fight, but that doesn’t mean don’t think at all. You still choose and you still observe and you still learn, especially in fights like this. I always thought he meant that I should just not think about the trivial stuff, shouldn’t be angry or desperate or distracted. It’s not just that. I see that now.

It doesn’t protect me during the next pass, though, and Lord Masamune still sends me flying with a two-sword strike right in the gut. If anything, thinking about thinking is even more distracting than just thinking, or just being angry.

“So what do you think?” Lord Masamune says, over me but to Kojuro. “Should I send a letter to Shikoku?”

My father shakes his head, no. “He’s not fast enough.”

I hold my side and try to stand up straight. “I’m standing right here.”

“Heh,” Lord Masamune says, “he’s definitely angry enough.”

“Send to court,” my father says. “Kill two birds with one stone.”

Lord Masamune pauses, takes his time to think, like he’s surprised. But then he looks at me, and at my sword-arm, and flashes his teeth. “Looks like you’re right,” he says after some time. “You sure your boy can take it?”

“After you,” my father says, “I’m sure he can put up with anything.”

I can’t help the dread that coils in my stomach, though that might be the bruise that’s starting to form. But Lord Masamune laughs, and my father is almost smiling.

It’s time to break for lunch anyway, so Lord Masamune and I bow to each other and call it done. He takes an umbrella and leaves, and I straighten up the dojo. I don’t expect my father to stay, but he does, and helps me out of my armor as well.

“Lord Masamune listens to you,” I say, when my father is helping to unclasp my bracers.

“After all these years, I’d be worried if he didn’t.” My father undoes the one bracer, makes a move to undo the other without my asking. “You haven’t figured out how to make him listen to you yet.”

“No,” I admit.

He unwrinkles my sleeve, glances at the door. “Has he pushed you into anything you don’t want?”

I’ve thought about my answer to that question enough, these last few weeks, and it comes easily. “No. He says things I don’t like to hear, but he’s not forceful. Just demanding. And crude.”

If I didn’t know better, I’d think my father laughed at that. “He is.”

We take my armor over to the mannequin in the corner and set it up for tomorrow, and that’s the last of the work in the dojo. I expect my father to head out to the garden now, or to eat with the senior retainers, but he follows me into the awning of the courtyard and keeps talking.

“Lord Masamune is like a storm,” he says, with an eye on the thickening rain. “If you know how, you can predict where he’ll be. But once he’s there, what can you do but cover your head?”

I nod and look up at the clouds. There’s lightning brewing. “You can stay away from the high ground.”

“For now, you can.” I wasn’t sure whether he’d smiled before, but he does now, a tense private smile like he gets when he’s had a few cups of sake and someone brings up my mother. “Someday, you’ll _be_ the high ground. What then?”

As long as I haven’t thought about it yet, there’s no shame in admitting, “I don’t know.”

“You should learn. It’ll make it easier for him to listen to you.”

I nod, listen. There’s thunder overhead, but I never saw the lightning flash. It must be far off. It takes me a moment to see that my father is listening for the same, eyes closed.

“How long did it take you to learn?”

“To be the high ground, or to make him listen?”

“Both.”

He thumbs at the hilt of his sword. “I had an advantage, making him listen. I knew how to make him before he knew how to make me. Now he’s figured out how I do it, and I only manage because he doesn’t mind. You’ll have a hard time of it, but I think you’re farther along than you know.”

I nod. “And being the high ground?”

“That, he taught me.”

“Then you should teach me.”

He shakes his head, no. “He will. And you’ll learn it in the blink of an eye.”

***

Honda Tadakatsu comes to Sendai one week later. He towers over almost every building and sears the ground he lands on. There’s a crater in the earth there now. All of the pages are staring at it. Some of them have dropped their weapons. I haven’t--if anything, I’m holding tighter.

But then Yorifusa bursts out laughing, covers his nose because it probably hurts, and runs over, and latches onto the machine like a monkey onto a tree. “Tadakatsu! Hey! Awesome!”

Tadakatsu makes a kind of grinding noise in his limbs and lifts Yorifusa clean off the ground like he weighs no more than an apple.

“Is everything okay? How’s dad? Why are you here?” Yorifusa’s an ass, but it’s kind of nice to see him happy and less, well, macho than usual, and here he is hugging a giant armored...whatever Tadakatsu like it’s family.

Then Tadakatsu levels his drill, and points it at me. It spins, blindingly fast, and his red eye flashes like a star.

Oh.

Shit.

***

This afternoon, Lord Masamune sits in a lawn chair drinking something blue with shaved ice and two straws and a little paper umbrella, while I run for my life.

***

It’s sunset before anyone finds me--I must have passed out. The grass by the river is cool, slightly muddy, but I have no intention of moving. The last thing I remember hearing is Lord Masamune calling Tadakatsu off in that other language he speaks, and telling me to bow. I think I tried. I just didn’t get up afterward.

That was ridiculous. I don’t think I’ve run that hard since the fire in the kitchens three years ago.

Something kicks me in the side. “Are you dead, Shigenaga?” It’s Kikuhime, of all people.

Great. Now she gets to see me weak and worn out. Why do I put up with this again? “I’m fine,” I say, more to the grass than to her.

“Good. You’re late for dinner. Lord Masamune says you’re off the hook for tonight.” She kneels down, but all that does is make her knee me in the same side she kicked me in. I cough. There is definitely dirt in my mouth. “What happened?”

“Honda Tadakatsu.”

“No wonder.” She laughs, and I bet she’s rolling her eyes, but I can’t lift my face to look. Maybe a wolf will come and eat me. I doubt I’d feel it. “My suitor today said he trained under him. Pretty good fight, but not good enough. I had to break his jaw before he yielded.”

Wait, what? “You had a suitor?”

“Yes. From Edo.” If I didn’t know better, I’d think she just sighed. And she’s sitting down on her hip now, so her knee isn’t nudging me anymore. “I truly don’t understand why Lord Masamune bothers. There’s no way my father’s spirit will rest if I let a Tokugawa beat me in single combat, let alone marry me.”

I must have molasses in my ears. Or mud. Probably just mud. “Your suitor was a Tokugawa?”

“Yes. Tadateru. One of Yorifusa’s brothers. Have you even been listening?”

“I have, I’m sorry. I’m just tired. And you broke his jaw?”

“It’s not as impressive as what you did to Yorifusa’s nose, but it was a fairer fight, so.”

If I were less worn out, I’d probably want to hit her for that. Just a little. Maybe a nudge in the side. I can’t think. “Good job.”

“I think so too. But his suit was hopeless. He wasn’t strong enough. I wouldn’t mind if he tried again, but I don’t think he’ll do it. I don’t really want to break his jaw again, I just don’t want to marry him. Or anyone like him.”

I nod. Well, I rub my chin in the dirt. It makes sense: Kikuhime shouldn’t have to marry someone weak. Honestly, I don’t think someone weak could keep up with her. I know she’s got more of a say in things than most girls, since aside from Lord Masamune’s protection she and her sisters don’t have anyone to tell them what they should and shouldn’t do, but if she wants to rebuild her clan I think she’s going about it the right way. “Does Lord Masamune know this?”

“What, that I’m holding my suitors to trial by combat?” She laughs and fidgets with the end of my ponytail, though how she can find any hair under all the mud and sweat is beyond me. “He does now.”

Oh. Well, that explains why she’s not serving at dinner either. “What are the terms?”

“Defeat me, or last fifteen minutes with no major wounds or disarmament.”

“That’s reasonable.”

“I’m glad you think so. And my sisters have agreed to the pact as well. _No man is worthy of a Sanada wife if he cannot match her spirit._ ” Her fingers chip away at the dry mud in my hair, and it flakes onto my lower back. My yukata must have gotten pushed up during the fight. I’m less embarrassed than I should be. “And if there aren’t any men left in Japan who can...well, I wouldn’t want to marry them anyway.”

I recall some of the things Lord Masamune’s said to me, training and after, and on the night before we drew up the contract. “I think if Lord Masamune tries to talk you out of it, he doesn’t have a leg to stand on.”

She shoves my shoulder, and I let it turn me onto my back. I’m not sure I have the energy to protest, let alone fight her, which I shouldn’t do anyway, but she’s looking at me so earnestly that I just let my hand drop.

“Will you bring it up with Lord Masamune later?” she asks. “I don’t need you to speak on my behalf, I just--I want to know what he thinks. What he really thinks, not what he’s saying to placate us.”

“He’ll probably say so without me asking,” I tell her. “I’ll bring it up if he doesn’t. Maybe not tonight,” I add quickly, because I don’t care what he’s got in store for me, I am not getting up to much of anything tonight. “But I will.”

She thanks me, and looks up at the sky. In places, it’s the same bright orange of her kimono and the coin ornaments in her hair. “Is it wrong to want to be strong for my sisters?”

I shake my head, no, and the grass beneath me brushes against my ears. “Not if you also want to be strong for yourself.”

“That’s a given.”

“Guess so.”

***

You would think Lord Masamune would go easy on me after a day of Honda Tadakatsu kicking my ass.

...No, you wouldn’t.

He comes at me almost as soon as we’ve bowed, doesn’t even give me time hit a starting stance. One second I’m looking at the floor respectfully and taking a breath to get ready and the next he’s chasing me around the dojo like I’ve stolen his purse.

“C’mon!” he yells, where someone else would howl a kiai, “learn your damn lesson!” He swipes at me with all three swords and I block like I know I’m supposed to, and then he twists into the reverse and lays me out flat. “I gave you the night off to think about it, what’d you come up with?”

“I couldn’t think!”

He laughs and takes another swing at me even though I’m down. “Then don’t think. Just fight me!”

I have to roll to get out of his way and barely make it, and I’m not even on my feet when he stabs at me again. One of the blades even pierces the floor. I’m not sure why I think I have time to look, it’s just like yesterday even if Lord Masamune’s not an enormous steel-armored creature with a spinning drill.

Wait.

No. I can’t wait.

I keep running, block when I can. It really is just like yesterday. If I stop to think he’ll cut me down.

But I’ll have to stop eventually, won’t I? I don’t have infinite energy. The longer the fight goes on, the less fight I’ll have in me. But I can’t beat him unless I know what he’s going to do and can get in a swing, and I’m not going to get in a swing.

He glares down at me before the next strike. I have to parry, have to keep those three swords from hitting me again--

\--but a parry is really the same as a hit, isn’t it? It takes the same amount of time.

And that was the lesson, wasn’t it. 

_Think now so you don’t have to later._

The next time he swings at me, I duck under all three blades and come up on the other side, and sock him in the face with the hilt of my sword.

Everything stops. Lord Masamune freezes, three swords tense in his hand. He opens his mouth, grinds his jaw, and raises his eyebrow at me, one tense flicker.

It worked. I catch his smile, jagged and smug.

Then he rams his knee into my gut.

I hit the floor coughing and disarmed. It’s not the most pain I’ve ever dealt with, but it’s enough to sear my eyes and throat, and my breath hacks out of me like a goose crying warning. But I did it. I know I did it, and even before the pain spreads and subsides I’m trying to laugh instead of cough.

“ **Nice work** ,” he says, sheathing his swords so he can rub his jaw with both hands. “I was afraid I’d have to sic Tadakatsu on you a second time.”

“I--” I cough, or laugh, or neither. “No thank you, your Lordship.”

“Heh. So what do you know now?”

I catch my breath and get to my knees, take the time to answer properly. “Don’t overthink. There’s no time when someone’s trying to kill you. Time is life.”

“Good. And?”

“And endurance doesn’t mean victory. It just means endurance.”

He takes me by the chin, tilts me up to face him. I’m still breathing hard, and there’s a faint red swell on his cheek from my knuckles and the hilt. “You can take a lot of punishment. That’s great. It’s still better to hit as hard as you can, as soon as you can, as much as you can. You’ve known how to dodge that strike since the second time I pulled it on you. Why the hell have you spent two weeks blocking it instead of striking back?”

I don’t think about my answer to that, just say it. “Because I thought you wanted me to.”

His fingers tighten on my chin, then let go. “You see how stupid that is now?”

“Yes, your Lordship.”

“And it only took Honda Tadakatsu to drill it into you.” He glances over my shoulder, and grins. “You were right, Kojuro.”

“Thank you,” my father says.

My father is watching from the door, a small, steady smile across his face.

It doesn’t make my gut stop hurting, or yesterday’s wounds less sore, but everything else lightens enough to make me think, dizzily, that they were worth it.

***

That night, after everything else Lord Masamune and I do, I bring up Kikuhime like I said I would. Not immediately after--I wait until we’re dressed and cleaned up, and he sends for sake. I pour for him, and he pours for me. There’s a first time for that too, I suppose; it’s not my first time drinking, but it’s my first time sharing in it like a man instead of sneaking it or being handed a cup to toast to a victory I’ve never seen.

“Lord Masamune,” I start, “about Kikuhime’s pact--”

“Fucking Sanada Yukimura,” Lord Masamune groans into his cup. “How the hell did he have seven goddamn daughters?”

It doesn’t quite line up with what I was going to ask him, but I listen.

Lord Masamune downs the rest of the sake. I pour him another cup as soon as he sets it down. “Every damn time I went to him in Kai, it was another wife, another concubine, another kid on the way. Heh. He said they just kept turning up in his bed and it would be rude to refuse them, but he loved them all.” He lifts the next bowl of sake to his lips, but doesn’t drink, darts a glance down into it like anyone else would check his reflection in the surface of a pond. “And loving them all got him seven daughters and four sons.”

“Four?” I know three of them are here--Yukinobu, Daimitsu, and the youngest Daimaru.

“Yukimasa was too old for me to take in. He’d be a year older than you. I sent him to Kyushu; I think he’s still there with the Shimazu clan. Least, I hope he’s still there.” He drinks. “Better there than Edo.”

I nod. I don’t know the whole story, but I’ve gotten enough of it from Kikuhime and Yukinobu: the Tokugawa stripped Lord Yukimura of his power and overran Kai when he resisted, and Lord Masamune killed him in a duel in Osaka. I used to think Kikuhime and all of them were Lord Masamune’s wards, but according to my father officially it’s something closer to hostages. Some of the former Sanada retainers serve my father now, and two of Lord Yukimura’s former concubines serve here with his daughters.

“If the Sanada are better off in Kyushu than Edo, why did you let a Tokugawa propose to Kikuhime?”

“All I did was tell him he should try if he had the balls to do it,” He tsks through his teeth. “Well, now that the Tokugawa know Kikuhime’s game, she’ll be fighting off a lot of macho men and the strongest one’ll get her. If that’s what she wants, I’m for it. I think he’d be for it too.”

“Her father?”

“Yeah. He was that kind of man too.”

“But you just said that he honored all the women who came into his bed.”

“And?”

“And that doesn’t sound so...macho.”

He’s done with this cup of sake, and I move to pour him another. “Sanada Yukimura,” he says, “whatever else he was, was the strongest, bravest fucking warrior in Japan, except for me and Kojuro. Only reason he’s dead is because I killed him. No one else could do it. A lot of them tried. They didn’t. I did. **Got it?** ”

“Yes, your Lordship.”

“And if that kind of man wouldn’t want all seven of his daughters to have the strongest husbands they could fight, if that’s what they want, then he wouldn’t be Sanada Yukimura. So if that means now I’ve got to find all seven of them husbands they can fight, I’ll do it, because that’s what he would have wanted me to do.”

“Because you killed him?”

“Because only I _could_.”

I shut my eyes and drink.

***

In the morning, Lord Masamune wakes only enough to tell me he’s got a splitting headache, then bundles back to sleep. Since I don’t have to squire him, I’m out at dawn, already fed, waiting for drills to start.

Kikuhime and her sisters have commandeered the training ground. Except for the one of her sisters who is silently practicing archery at the far side of the pitch, Kikuhime is leading them, more or less the way I led the peasants the other day. Five girls stand in a neat row behind her with staffs or spears or glaives, though no glaive as big as hers, and swing when she counts the cuts. Thirty. Thirty-one. Thirty-two.

She has beautiful form, sure and decisive. Her naginata is a graceful extension of her arms, and even though it’s longer than she is tall she swings it like it weighs only as much as the ornaments in her hair.

When they make the fiftieth cut, and she changes the pattern, I almost forget to come down the hill.

“Kojuchiyo!” the littlest sister says, and that stops a couple of them cold. I try not to grit my teeth too much, but when Kikuhime gives me a _don’t mind them, they’re just kids_ look I let it relax.

“Lord Masamune is honest about supporting your oath,” I tell her--well, them, I guess. “He hopes you all don’t hold back, and train hard.”

Kikuhime smiles and holds her naginata tight--the younger sisters skip and shout “Hooray!”, and even the one in the corner with her bow shoots an arrow high in the air to cheer.

“We’re going to rebuild the Sanada clan!” the littlest one lisps, clapping around her tiny spear. “You’ll see, and we’ll be the strongest again!”

“Hey, you mean the strongest except for Date,” I say, cross my arms to make a point.

“Nuh-uh!”

“He has to say it,” the next-youngest sister says. “He’s Kojuchiyo.”

“That’s Shigenaga-sensei to you,” Kikuhime says.

...That’s really kind of her, actually. Kind enough that it startles me.

Her smile widens, and she goes on, kneeling to her littlest sister’s level. “He’s Shigenaga-sensei because if any of you ever want to learn how to use a sword or to defend against someone who does, you’ll learn it from him. He’s got the strongest teachers in the world, so he’s strong too and he’s going to teach you. Understand?”

They chorus, _yes, big sister_ and _yes, Shigenaga-sensei_ , and the sun rises over the hill, but I don’t blink it out of my eyes.

***


	5. Chapter 5

The first time I help teach the Sanada girls--only two days after Kikuhime asked me to--it’s just a matter of showing them the differences between how a sword and a reach weapon work. Some of it is stuff that’s intuitive to me, but wouldn’t be to them, like remembering that a person can only hold one end of a sword; the rest is demonstrating, with Yukinobu’s help, that there are as many ways to wield a sword as there are people who choose them. The girls sit attentively and ask good questions. Even the youngest one, who asks why some people put swords away even when they’re supposed to still be fighting, and I have to give a beginner’s explanation of iaijutsu and will probably have to read up on it later to make sure I got everything right.

After the lesson winds down, I still don’t have to be serving at dinner for another half hour, and Kikuhime takes me aside to thank me and ask for clarification on a couple of the forms Yukinobu and I demonstrated. I won’t fight her--I can’t--but I let Yukinobu step in so she can test a couple of moves against him, I and I sit aside and play referee.

And then the two youngest Sanada sisters start playing with my hair.

I can’t stop them. I’m too tired, and it’s not that distracting really, and besides, I just put them through their paces in training so it’s the least I can do. I sit on a weapons crate while Yukinobu and Kikuhime practice, and call their points, while the youngest sisters fidget and plait and wind my ponytail. There’s enough hair for both of them to play with; I don’t think I’ve ever cut it, so if the tail’s undone it’s long enough to sit on, and as long as they don’t get it into my face I can still concentrate enough to keep score for Kikuhime and Yukinobu. Playing with it is actually kind of relaxing, like it used to be with my mother. I only start calling the girls out on it when they start arguing over which ornaments to hold it up with.

Wait. What are they doing to my hair?

“Put the dragonfly up here!”

“No, the berries are prettier!”

“But they’re smaller and he needs a big one right here!”

I instinctively jerk my hand up to my hair to feel what they’re doing, and the sister on the left pulls it down. “No, Shigenaga-sensei, don’t mess it up!”

Yukinobu stops fighting mid-pass to look over at me and laugh, which means Kikuhime wallops him in the head before any sound comes out. Once Kikuhime stops swinging to look at me, she outright drops her naginata and covers her mouth to laugh.

Oh no. No. I look like a concubine, don’t I.

I shouldn’t fight with girls, I can’t fight with girls, I can’t lash out at them but “What the hell are you doing?”

The littlest sister, whose hair is now mostly undone because she was using her ornaments on me, pouts and looks at the floor. “Making Shigenaga-sensei pretty,” she says.

“He’s pretty enough,” Yorifusa says, skidding down from the top of the hill. A few of the other pages are up there, probably on their way to the baths, but they don’t follow him down. “At least for the boss.”

_Make it count,_ I remember. _Don’t just endure._ I should say something, there’s something smart that’ll shut him up but I can’t think what it is, and I wind up saying nothing for far too long.

Yorifusa gets to the bottom of the hill, sidesteps Yukinobu and Kikuhime and leans over to look into my face. “You asking the girls for tips?”

“ _We’re_ asking _him_ for tips,” the next-littlest sister says, with the same kind of bravado as when she fights. It’s a good effort. And really kind of her. But still, it’s not going to work.

“I’ll bet you are.” Yorifusa crosses his arms and smirks. He says that way too lewdly for the little girls to understand, but I get it, and so does Kikuhime.

“You’re just jealous because he broke your nose for sticking it in his business,” Kikuhime says. “You’ll never be as pretty as your big brother now, is that it? Now everyone’s going to see how ugly you are because your face matches the rest of you.”

“Just wait ‘til someone breaks your face, missy. I bet it’ll happen with the guy who’s stupid enough to fight to marry you and then he won’t want you ‘cause you’re damaged goods.”

“You mean stupid enough like your brother?”

“Yeah, that _was_ pretty stupid of him, wasn’t it,” Yorifusa says. “I mean, sullying himself with a Sanada.”

Kikuhime’s naginata clicks into place in her hands. “Is that a challenge, Tokugawa Yorifusa?”

“Ha, no way. I don’t want to be stuck with you when I win.”

“Then don’t you dare insult my family’s honor!”

“And you won’t win!” the middle sister, the archer, yells from behind the others. “You could never beat a Sanada. Any Sanada!”

Yorifusa laughs. “Yeah, I bet that’s what your father said before he got what he deserved from mine.”

I don’t know who shouts what first, but I know that Yukinobu’s shinai is out and he’s in-stance the same time I am. “You are treading some dangerous ground, Yorifusa!” Yukinobu tightens his hands on the hilt, comes forward almost into striking range. “And there’s eight of us plus Shige, and only one of you. Do you really want to mess with us?”

“The wakashu’s not gonna fight for you,” Yorifusa says. “He’ll mess up his pretty hair.”

I’m armed. Yorifusa isn’t. 

Well, Lord Masamune did say to make it count.

“Say it again.” I take a cross-stance like my father’s, twist the shinai so that if it were a blade it’d flash into his face. “Say I’m pretty, Yorifusa.”

He lets his arms down at the sides, cracking his knuckles like a bird on a branch. “Hell yeah, you’re pretty. You’re the boss’s pretty little fuck-toy.”

The only reason I don’t bash his teeth out with my shinai _right there_ is that Kikuhime gets her naginata between us in time and holds me off. Twice. Then a third time. Looks like the Sanada girls are getting a proper demonstration after all.

“Stop it, Kikuhime!”

“He’s not worth it, Shigenaga, calm down!”

“No!”

She twists her naginata under my shinai, lets go of one side and braces me in the middle with the haft across my gut. I keep struggling. Wow, she’s strong. “If he wants to arm himself and fight you, let him fight you, but don’t do this!”

Yorifusa, meanwhile, is laughing himself sick. “Takes a girl to fight a girl!”

Kikuhime shouts at him over my shoulder, “If you’d have just shut up and fought me like a gentleman I wouldn’t have to hold him back! Get out of here now or I’ll let him go and you can’t say I didn’t warn you!”

He thinks about it for a second. I seethe. I think I might have bitten the inside of my cheek.

“Just go,” Kikuhime says, one last time. “You won, all right? You made him angry and you made him feel weak. So just go. Take that and go.”

It surprises me, and I don’t stop going for his damn throat, but something in her tone makes Yorifusa smirk, almost the same way Lord Masamune does when I’ve learned something right in a pass--but tighter. More smug. I want to rip it off his face. “Just as long as we all know it,” he says, and backs off, a skip in his step on the way up the hill.

One of the Sanada sisters throws a rock at him on the way and calls him a jerk. It misses, but he notices, and it just makes him laugh harder.

Kikuhime doesn’t even think about letting me go until he’s out of sight. By then, I’ve probably bruised my own arms trying to force myself out.

“Shigenaga,” she says, the same way I talk to an uppity horse, “I’m going to let you down now, all right?”

“All right.”

“Promise you won’t run after him?”

“I won’t run after him.”

“On your honor as a Katakura in the service of the Date clan. I mean it, Shigenaga. Don’t do this.”

“Don’t you start talking to me like that too.”

“I’m not.” She tightens the staff of the naginata against my arms and chest, just once, to remind me. “I’m not saying this because you’re weak. I’m saying this because you’re stronger than him and you shouldn’t lower yourself to exerting your might on someone as weak and stupid as that Tokugawa pig. _Promise me._ ”

Her breath is in my ear, and all of her little sisters are looking up at me with eyes as wide as saucers. I don’t believe her for a second.

But I have to. “Okay.” It takes two breaths for it to catch up with me, but I lower my head and shut my eyes and give her what she wants. “On my honor as the son of Katakura Kagetsuna and a retainer of the Date clan, I swear it.”

“Swear what, Shigenaga?”

“I will not track Tokugawa Yorifusa down, and I won’t face him in unfair combat.”

“Ever.”

“Kikuhime--”

“ _Ever_.”

“...Ever.”

We take a deep breath, almost in tandem, and she lets the naginata down enough to let me out. I must look ridiculous, with these little girls’ hair ornaments in my hair and spit trailing out of my mouth and everything else rumpled and ruined and bruised, having just been forcibly restrained by a girl only two years older than me.

I can’t look at her. Or them. Or anyone.

I take the ornaments out and just let them hit the dirt.

“I hope you’re happy,” I say, but I’m already running for the main house, and I don’t wait for her to say otherwise.

***

I take my bath alone, in Lord Masamune’s rooms. Toshichiyo is the one who brings the water. He doesn’t say anything except to be polite, but I know he had to get the hot water from somewhere and that means overhearing Yorifusa telling everyone everything. I’m probably never going to bathe with the pages again. It’s for the best.

I serve through dinner without letting anything on. I can tell my father knows something--he always does--but I can trust him not to bring it up, and Lord Masamune doesn’t say anything either. Maybe Kikuhime kept her mouth shut for once. She’s serving tonight too, and doesn’t look at me. Good.

And after that, Lord Masamune takes me back to his room like nothing’s wrong, nothing’s different, and I want it to be that way so I throw myself into it.

He laughs even when I’m kissing him, lets words out as soon as I give him space to breathe. “Looks like you’re hungry tonight,” he says, or he says most of it before I cut him off to shut him up. It just makes it true but I don’t want to think. I hold tighter, grab his hair like he does to mine. It’s harder to hold, thinner, softer. “Yeah, you want it.”

I want him to stop talking. I want to stop listening. It means getting his clothes off first and shutting him up, so I do, pull out the knot in his hakama without waiting for him to tell me I can. They hit the floor and I fumble around under his kimono and he laughs into my mouth.

“Yeah, you want my cock in you, **that it?** ” He rubs against my hand, curls his fist in my hair, a signal that I know by now, _do the same to me_. “Want it to fill you up good?”

“ _Yes,_ ” I say, mostly through my teeth, because I will not tell my daimyo to shut up and fuck me. 

He pulls back on my hair enough to look me in the eye. He’s amused. I want him to stop looking. I want him to be behind me like the last couple of times, plowing all the thoughts out of my head, even if it means I am what Yorifusa says I am--

\--no. I won’t think about that right now.

I work him harder in my hand, kiss him the way I should, shut the rest out. His skin is flushed and hot and I want mine to be the same. He pushes my kimono open, rakes his hands down my back, nails out, and even if it’s a little hard I can keep going, I _will_ keep going until there’s nothing left. His hand slips down to my behind and even if I know there’s more to do it’s more now, it’s something to think about that isn’t today.

“Yeah, you’re gonna be real gorgeous, riding my cock,” he murmurs against my skin, “that pretty ass of yours all tight, trying to take me in.”

I let go of his cock and grab the nearest sword I can find. It’s one of his six, I think--well, I don’t think, I know--and the sheath goes flying across the room, hits the far wall. The display case with the other five topples over under us and I have a blade at his throat, his back to a wall, my hand curled in his kimono and teeth at least as sharp as his.

All I can say to him is “Shut the hell up.”

He only looks surprised for the space of one breath. And after that he looks down the length of the blade, to my hand, then up to my face, and smiles. “Heh. You really are a Katakura.”

...I have a sword to my daimyo’s throat.

I have a sword in my hand and my daimyo is unarmed and I am threatening his life.

There is no excuse. There is no excuse, ever.

I let go of him, but hold onto the sword. I shouldn’t use his, it’s too big, but I won’t have time to find another and I can’t look my father in the eyes and ask for one of his. Or even for him to be my second. I need a second. I should just find someone in the hall, there are guards, there are always guards, maybe one of them will take pity on me and hack my head off if I do it wrong.

I slide open the door, drag myself through it. Yeah, there are guards. I can ask them. Seppuku is a two-person job.

“Shit, you really _are_ a Katakura.” Lord Masamune scrambles after me, grabs my hair and yanks me back into the room, hard enough that I fall on my back. And then he slams the door shut. “What the fuck?”

“I have dishonored your Lordship and must atone with my life,” I say. It’s true. I’m such an idiot. It’s too soon, not that there’s ever a good time but I wasn’t _done_ yet and this is stupid and my father is going to resurrect me just so he can kill me again, except I’m his only son and the Katakura line ends with me and then he’ll have nothing and it’s all my fault. “I shouldn’t have threatened you and I can’t ever repair this and I’m so sorry--”

Lord Masamune holds me by the hair and punches me in the face.

There’s blood in my mouth. I stop talking.

“You die when I say you die,” he says. “Drop the damn sword.”

I let it go.

“Good. Look at me.”

I can’t. I have to. I do. And if I don’t look him in the eye, if I try to cheat by focusing on the patch or his forehead or anything else, he’ll know, and it’ll make this worse.

He says it again: “You die when I say you die. You think I couldn’t have fought you off even like that? Save it for when you really threaten my life. You didn’t. And you don’t get to fucking kill yourself. You’re _mine_. **Got it?** ”

I breathe. It takes three to say anything at all. “Yes, your Lordship.”

“Now calm the fuck down. Take off your clothes and get in bed. I’ll deal with you in a second.”

“Yes, your Lordship.”

It takes a while to get started, but I get to my feet, start dealing with my clothes. He kneels and takes the sword away, stalks over to the far wall to get the sheath, and then slides open a panel to tell the guards, “Sake. Now. And keep your traps shut about this or I’ll tell Kojuro.”

“Yes, boss!”

One of them runs off. I kneel on my futon, still too shell-shocked to draw the covers up. I wait while he rearranges the display of the six swords, count my breaths, wait out the swelling in my cheek from where he punched me.

“I should’ve expected this.” He sits on his futon once he’s done straightening up the room, shakes his head, laughs to himself. “Your father never taught you otherwise, huh.”

“My father?”

“If I had a soldier for every time Kojuro threatened to kill himself for something unforgivable, I’d march on Edo right now.” He scoffs. “Like he’d be any good to me dead.”

I say nothing. A servant arrives with sake, sets it down on a tray next to Lord Masamune’s futon and backs off and out. Lord Masamune pours one cup, downs it, then pours two more, one for him and one for me. I take the cup and down it as soon as he picks his own up again, and drink without toasting.

“So,” he says with a wave of his cup. “Spit it out.”

“It makes me feel small,” I say. The sake leaves my throat dry, settles high in my chest instead of my stomach, at least for now. “Not what we do--I like what we do--but I don’t like what you say. And you’re not the only one who says it.”

“What, that you’re gorgeous?”

I set the cup down, but it rattles, and he pours me another with his eyebrow raised. “You’re the only one who says it like that. But my friends--well, not my friends anymore, the other pages, Yorifusa mostly--and the men and the peasants and the Sanada girls--”

“And you think it makes you less of a man,” he says, like he knows.

“Yes, your Lordship.”

He drinks this cup a little slower, smiling over the rim. “I get it. So that little shit ran his mouth off at you, and you couldn’t do anything about it, and I tripped you up.”

I nod.

“You hate it that much, huh? Being pretty.”

“I don’t hate it, just...it makes me less of a warrior, doesn’t it? It makes people see me as your--” I can’t say it, so I don’t try. “--as something you use, not someone who serves you or protects them or fights.”

He nods. “You know that’s not why you’re my wakashu, right?”

“But you said--”

“I say you’re easy on the eyes because it’s true. I also said I like your spirit and you’re gonna be strong.” He glances over my shoulder at the swords on their rack, and motions for me to set my cup down so he can refill it. I do. “You’re not a kid, Shigenaga, and you’re not a concubine. Thought you’d figured that out by now.”

He puts the cup in my hand, and I shut my eyes, don’t drink yet. “But other people--”

“You don’t do this for other people. You do this for me and you do this for yourself. Other people don’t get to say anything about it, and if they do it doesn’t matter. Unless you let it matter. And that’s your problem, not theirs.”

“It’s my problem until it becomes yours.”

“Then don’t let it become mine. Don’t bottle it up until you do something stupid and I have to punch the Katakura out of you again.”

It sounds more ridiculous than funny, but I can’t help laughing. “Yes, your Lordship.”

“Good.” He toasts, and I match it, and we drink. “You’re not gonna sneak out and try to kill yourself?”

“No.”

“You better not be lying. Now go to sleep.”

We make preparations quickly, put the tray and the sake out the door, blow out the lanterns in silence. He settles into his futon, and I into mine, the blanket tight around my shoulders.

Between the alcohol and the end of a long and trying day, I should be able to sleep. But I’m still awake when Lord Masamune’s breathing evens out, and a while after.

***

We don’t talk about it in the morning. I don’t know if we’ll ever talk about it again. I’d rather not. But I get him armored and out at dawn like any other day, and take a few moments to myself to straighten up the room before I have to go as well. I’ll just ignore Yorifusa, I think--I know what it means to Lord Masamune better, and I’ll have to deal. I know I’m not supposed to stand there and take it, but if Yorifusa’s words are as empty as Lord Masamune says they are, I wouldn’t be enduring them. I’d just be treating them like what they are. So I steel myself, and finish with the room, and figure I’ll head to the kitchens to get breakfast before drills.

“Lord Shigenaga!” Toshichiyo runs up to me almost as soon as I slide shut the door. “Lord Shigenaga, hurry! Yorifusa-senpai and Yukinobu-senpai are fighting!”

Damn. “All right, I’ll get Lord Masamune and we can break it up--”

“With real swords,” Toshichiyo finishes, “they’re fighting with real swords!”

Shit.

“Lord Masamune went to breakfast with my father and the others. Go get him now! Where are they fighting?”

“The courtyard of the pages’ quarters. I tried to stop them but--”

“Go get Lord Masamune _now_.”

“Yes sir!”

I break out at a run, don’t even think about how I’m going to stop them or why it started in the first place. It doesn’t matter. It’s Yukinobu, he’s younger than us and not as strong yet and everyone knows it, and if Yorifusa gets a strike in at all with a real weapon--it’s all my fault, I should have finished him off yesterday or not let it get to me, or anything, the Sanada shouldn’t be involved and that’s all my fault.

I hear the steel clanging and the pages cheering before the courtyard is in sight. I don’t let myself think about who might be winning, just charge past Mitsukaga and the others, trip and skid in the dirt just out of range. There’s blood on the ground. Yukinobu is staggered, on the defensive. Yorifusa’s forehead is bleeding. If there’s blood and they’re still going, this might be to the death.

“Stop it!” I don’t have a weapon, I can’t get near them, but if I get in the way maybe they’ll stop.

Yukinobu does, and looks at me, and gapes.

Yorifusa doesn’t.

That sword is much too big for him and he hasn’t swung it well. But I know, looking at it like the world has slowed down, that it’ll still do enough damage when it connects with Yukinobu’s throat. I think Yukinobu notices it too, too late to block--

\--and someone else does, with a heavy fur bracer.

Two thuds ring out, and then two shouts, and the scrape of sandals just leaving the dirt. This intruder is big--not as big as Honda Tadakatsu, but big for a normal man, at least as tall as my father--and most of him is hair. It’s as long as mine but twice as bushy, light with grey stripes and more ornaments than I’ve seen any girl wear who wasn’t a paid entertainer. He holds Yorifusa and Yukinobu by the collars like they weigh no more than cats.

“Hey, hey, slow down!” The intruder doesn’t laugh, but every word out of his mouth sounds like it has a bubble under it. “Whoa, Masamune sure starts you off early. Are those real?” He shakes them both until the swords hit the ground. “Yeah, they’re real. Pretty sure you’re not supposed to be playing with those.”

“Let me go, you bastard!” Yorifusa yells.

Yukinobu’s only marginally more polite. “This was an honorable challenge! I demand satisfaction!”

The intruder laughs so hard that both Yukinobu and Yorifusa shake with it. “Ha! I bet I know whose kid you are. And if you’re his, you’re not going to shut up.”

“ **You’re right,** ” Lord Masamune says, at the other end of the courtyard. “Looks like you’re up to the same old tricks, Maeda Keiji.”

If Lord Masamune showing up wasn’t enough to quiet everyone down, the name _Maeda Keiji_ would be. Some of the pages murmur, _that’s the Hero of Sekigahara!_ A couple even get on their knees for him. I would, but I’m too busy staring.

He looks far too...awkward, too funny, to be the Hero of Sekigahara. Then again, he just charged in here and broke up a fight just like he did in the war before I was born, and all the drawings and paintings that I’ve seen of the battle show Lord Keiji with a fan of feathers in his hair. I thought it was supposed to be shorthand for his helmet.

But would Lord Keiji wave his arms and protest people bowing to him, like he’s doing now? He laughs through grit teeth, too sheepish to be a hero, “Heh, easy there, don’t start doing all that on my account. Man, Masamune, what’ve you been telling them?”

“I ain’t been telling them shit,” Lord Masamune says. “They just learned some lessons better than others, that’s all. **Drop ‘em.** ”

Lord Keiji nods, and lets Yorifusa and Yukinobu fall to the dirt. Yukinobu pulls into a full formal bow as soon as he can, and Yorifusa does the same a second later.

The other pages part for Lord Masamune on his way over. I don’t have to move very far, but he looks at me like I should stay where I am, so I do, more or less. Once he’s close enough, he kicks first Yorifusa, then Yukinobu, right in the seat--not hard, just enough to show he’s there. “Why don’t you two thank Maeda Keiji for saving your stupid asses?”

They both do, too quickly for it to be genuine, but if it’s more out of fear than anything else I can understand why.

“You’ll thank me more later,” Lord Keiji says.

“No they won’t,” Lord Masamune says, “because they’ll be hurting so much they can’t speak. Remind me how many lashes it is for fighting with another page, _Tokugawa_? You should remember, it hasn’t been that long.”

“Twenty,” Yorifusa says to the ground.

“And how much for stealing live weapons, _Sanada_?”

Yukinobu coughs. “Fifteen, boss.”

“Then I’d better do it myself so you don’t have to get _thirty-five_ from Kojuro, ‘cause then you’d be shitting standing up for the rest of your lives. **Got it?** ”

“Yes, boss!”

Lord Masamune goes on, “Mitsukaga, take the rest of these clowns to training and tell Yoshinao you’re all doing thirty-five extra of each cut.”

“Yes, boss.”

“Toshichiyo?”

“Yes, boss?”

“You did good, so you’re gonna do more, got it?”

“Yes, boss!”

“Good. Take that big red horse over there to the stables, then take Maeda Keiji to the guesthouse and make sure he could eat off the floors if he wanted. You’re gonna shadow him as long as he’s here.”

“Yes, boss.”

“And Shigenaga?”

“Yes, your Lordship?”

I had hoped he wouldn’t address me at all. From his silence, and the way he turns to look at me, I think he didn’t expect me to address him like that, after so many _boss_ es in a row. Over his shoulder, Lord Keiji looks amused, a little surprised even.

But Lord Masamune just smiles at me, and cocks his head at my friends, bowed and humbled on the ground. “You’re with me. I can’t carry both of these idiots, and someone needs to break me off a bamboo cane from the riverbank.”

***

I didn’t drill with the pages that morning, or that evening. As far as I know, I won’t tomorrow morning either.


	6. Chapter 6

Lord Keiji is drunk.

I’ve seen people drunker--Lord Masamune’s senior retainers can get up to some stuff that would get us pages whipped out of town, and Lord Masamune himself can’t hold his liquor worth a damn--but Lord Keiji almost makes a show of it. His cheeks are as red as his sake bowl, which is bigger than my head, and he sings along with the courtesans at a volume that would make the Sanada kids envious. And if he forgets the words, which he has for the last two verses of _Tanuki, Why Are Your Balls So Big?_ , which I didn’t even think had verses, he just makes them up and throws everyone else off. Once that song is done, the courtesan playing the shamisen gives up and passes it to Lord Keiji, who finishes all the sake remaining in his bowl, and strikes up _Emperor, What Is That Bouncing In Front Of Your Horse?_ , and I’m pretty sure he’s not singing the right words to that one either.

When he’s had enough of that song, he hands off the shamisen again, and dances with the courtesans. Considering how drunk he is, he’s not half bad, but it’s just as ridiculous as you’d expect. His pet monkey joins in, hops from table to table and wiggles in time to the strings and drums. Everyone claps along, and Lord Masamune gets up and dances with him, not to be outdone. Everyone cheers louder for the boss, of course, but honestly I think Lord Keiji was more fun to watch.

We give the courtesans a break, and the wives and concubines come in with more sake and sweets for everyone. Lord Masamune settles down at the head of the room again, and Keiji at his left hand. The right side is reserved for my father, but he went off to the gardens some time ago, and so the place is empty.

“Man,” Lord Keiji says, plopping down to the cushions like he’s my age or younger, “you dragons always know how to throw a party!”

“Heh, I’ll take that, coming from you!” Lord Masamune waves his hand, tells the women to leave the jugs here, we’ll take on the pouring for them. Toshichiyo looks so pleased and surprised at the honor that it’s almost funny. I try to tell him _it’s okay, just pour,_ but can’t really say anything. He gets it, though, and does a pretty good job filling Lord Keiji’s bowl and getting out of the way.

I can’t make myself as unobtrusive as he can, but I guess I don’t have to. Once I’m done filling Lord Masamune’s bowl, he grabs my wrist before I’ve even set the jug back down. “You talked to the Hero of Sekigahara yet, Shigenaga?”

“Not yet,” not really, I mostly just stared at him earlier today and tried not to think about watching Yukinobu get beaten.

“Well then why don’t you?” Not that Lord Masamune gives me any time to say otherwise. “Oi, Keiji, someone for you to meet. He already knows who you are.”

“I’d hope, by now!” Lord Keiji laughs.

“No shit. Shigenaga, introduce yourself.”

Since I’m already kneeling, I just move aside from the table and complete the bow. “Katakura Shigenaga, at your service. Please look kindly upon me.”

I shouldn’t be surprised that Lord Keiji finds it ridiculous enough to slap his bowl down on the table. “Ha! Whoa! I should have known you were Kojuro’s! Come here, let me look at you.”

I raise my head, go around Lord Masamune’s back to sit between them, near Toshichiyo, and let him look. He tilts his head to one side--the pet monkey does the same--then the other, like he’s having a hard time putting me in focus.

“Whoa,” he says again. “I never expected Kojuro’s kid to be so pretty.”

Not him too. “Pretty,” I repeat.

“Aw, why the sour face? Doesn’t make you less pretty.” He reaches over, claps me on the back and pulls me close so fast my knees leave the cushions. “Just kinda. Sour. And pretty.”

I shut my eyes and can’t help gritting my teeth too visibly. “And why didn’t you expect that from my father?”

“Just didn’t. Not that your father’s not a good looking man--hey, Masamune, don’t look at me like that! Yeesh.” He rubs the back of his head, shrugs. “Maybe he was pretty when he was your age. What, you want to look like him or something?”

He’s had more to drink tonight than I’ve ever drunk. He’s the Hero of Sekigahara. He’s sitting at the high table with my daimyo and trying to compliment me and I think I’d rather punch him in the face.

I don’t. But I can’t stop the snap in my voice. “Even if my father was pretty, he could still wipe the floor with you.”

But Lord Keiji doesn’t glare at me, or even act surprised. “I know, I know!” he says, and thumps my back again. “What about you? Are you strong like your dad?”

“What do you think?” Lord Masamune says. “He’s my wakashu. He can take whatever I dish out.”

It might be the drunkenness, but I think Lord Masamune is almost diagonal with pride. Lord Keiji just laughs, though, and waves Toshichiyo over for more sake. “Yeah, guess that’s a requirement. And something a Katakura’s got to be good at.”

Lord Masamune scoffs into his bowl. “You trying to tell me something, Keiji?”

“Yeah, I’m saying you’re a high-maintenance guy!”

“Asshole.”

“Ha, see what I mean?” By now, Toshichiyo’s filled Lord Keiji’s bowl again, but instead of drinking from it, Lord Keiji hands it to me. “You’ve got your work cut out for you.”

I look from him, to the bowl, to Lord Masamune, and only the last one gives me permission. So I take it from Lord Keiji and drink. This is stronger stuff than Lord Masamune served me last night, and feels wonderful to drink, with a steady burn that immediately settles in my throat and down. I hand him back the bowl, but he’s already laughing. “Yeah, that’s the best way to deal with Masamune.”

“Watch your mouth, Keiji. You want to go out back and get some Date **hospitality**?”

I don’t know what that means, and I’m not sure Keiji does either, but since he’s laughing at everything else he might as well laugh at this.

“Now that you mention it, I should go out back. Where’s Kojuro?”

“Enh, probably off in that garden.”

The pet monkey perks up at the word, _garden_ , like he knows what it means.

“Yeah, ha, I should go,” Lord Keiji says, and the monkey jumps onto his shoulder. “You coming, Toshichiyo?”

Toshichiyo is about to say _yes, sir_ , but Lord Masamune cuts him off. “Go with him, Shigenaga.”

“Yes, your Lordship.” And since Lord Keiji is already dancing down from the dais and toward the door, I have to scramble to follow.

He knows his way around Sendai, that’s pretty clear, and turns in the right direction once we’ve got our shoes on. “Man, it’s starting to get cold,” he says. I’m surprised he can feel anything at all after how much he’s drunk, let alone walk straight, well mostly straight, but I don’t say anything either way. “You like it cold?”

“I don’t think it’s that cold at all, Lord Keiji.”

“Ha, don’t bother calling me Lord Anything. It makes me feel old.” He laughs, and the monkey scuttles off ahead of us. There’s still a while to go before the cliffs and the garden, but I guess it can smell the food. “Just Keiji is fine.”

“You’re not _just Keiji_ ,” I say, “but if you say so.”

“You’re your father’s only, right?”

I nod.

“Maybe I should be calling you Lord, then. I mean, you outrank me, right? Heh.” We turn a corner, and then the main house is at our backs. Two patrolling guards wave at us, and Lord Keiji waves back. It’s dark enough that almost as soon as we’re past them, they fade into shadow. I really hope my father is already on his way back to the main house. 

“People have started to do that,” I admit, thinking of Toshichiyo back at the feast.

“Call you Lord?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, yeah. You’re higher than them now. How long is it since Lord Masamune bumped you up?”

“Six weeks.”

“And he’s treating you all right?”

I stop walking, like that will help me think. It might. But I shouldn’t have to think about it, should I?

Lord Keiji turns around a few steps ahead, when he notices I’ve stopped. “I get you,” he says. “Masamune’s a hard man. Hard for a lot of things. --Not like that, I mean, unless he is, but I mean it’s a hard life, and he’s never had the luxury of apologizing for anything.”

“It’s a luxury to apologize?”

“It is when you’re Date Masamune.”

Maybe it isn’t. But it’s hard enough to apologize when you know what you’ve done. “No,” I tell Lord Keiji, even if I can’t look at him when I say it, “he’s treating me fine. He hasn’t done anything he should apologize for. He’s said some things, but we’ve talked about that already and I should learn to cope.”

He takes me by the upper arm--not hard, the way someone else might hug me--and then he does that too, pulls me close. My face barely reaches his shoulder. He really is about as tall as my father, but warmer. I don’t know where to put my hands.

“It shouldn’t have to be something you cope with,” he says. “What does Lord Masamune say?”

I just let my hands fall to my sides. This hug seems more about him than me. “You said it too. That I’m pretty.”

He laughs. It’s close enough to feel, which is strange--louder than Lord Masamune’s, less malicious than Yorifusa’s. “Is there something wrong with being pretty?”

“There is when people think it means you can’t fight, or don’t take you seriously.”

He pulls back--not enough to let go of me, but enough to make me look up, and he’s looking at me like I just compared his mother to a squirrel. “Since when is that a bad thing?”

...He has a point.

“It’s like a feint, except you have it up all the time,” Lord Keiji says. “That’s why people make fun of you for it, because it’s a strength you have and they don’t. I remember an old friend of mine, he was ugly as anything, and he used to get in twice as much trouble as me ‘cause he’d be a thug everywhere he went and people’d give me a pass until I proved I was just as bad.” He lets go of my arm to fiddle with his necklace, a pouch dangling halfway down his chest. “And then he teamed up with someone even prettier who was just as strong as him and they were unstoppable. And part of why he was unstoppable is that this new guy didn’t look like a fighter. Everyone underestimated him. Even me, heh. Everyone except him and Hideyoshi.”

I know I have to listen, but can’t help the dread climbing up my spine.

Lord Keiji drops the pouch back to where it was. “And in the end, he only died because your father threw him off a cliff.”

“The Toyotomi strategist?”

“The same. Lips like a girl, soft pale hair, the works. Your father underestimated him and paid for it. Well, I guess Hanbei paid the higher price in the end, but still.” He laughs, but now it’s a little forced, a little wistful, like the joke doesn’t sound as funny in his head as it used to. “My point is, it didn’t make him any less strong. If anything, it made him stronger, because he knew how to use it. Not that I’m saying you should start seducing people and stabbing them in the back, don’t think that’s what you want to do. But that’s not what he did either. He knew how his enemies saw him, and he used it to his advantage.”

I’d always imagined the Toyotomi strategist as withered and sickly and conniving. I never thought he’d fought my father hand-to-hand. My father doesn’t talk about that time in his life very much, and everyone I’ve heard the story from said he was tricked. Now I guess I know how.

I’m not sure it should make me feel stronger.

“Warriors who are ladies do the same thing,” Lord Keiji says. “Think of the strongest girl fighter you know.” That’s easy: Kikuhime. “How many people think they can beat her and how many of them are wrong?”

I picture her leading her sisters in drills, fighting off the shogun’s son, kicking my ass two years ago, forcibly holding me back from a fight. She _is_ beautiful, and that beauty hides her strength--well, except her legs. You know, I’ve never really thought about her legs like this. They’re taut and smooth and strong, and I have to wonder just how far up they go, and-- “All of them,” I say. I mean. Um. “Everyone’s wrong if they think they can beat her. And they do, until they lose.”

“So if it’s good enough for her, it’s good enough for you, am I right?”

I nod, and try not to keep thinking about Kikuhime’s legs. It’s disrespectful to Lord Keiji, even if he’s the one who told me to do it. “Did you used to be pretty?”

Of course, he laughs right in my face. “Hold on, what do you mean _used to be_? I’m the prettiest vagabond I know!”

The way he grins, I can believe it. And I can believe that no one saw it coming when he charged in to Sekigahara, challenged the shogun and Ishida, and beat them both into the ground.

He twirls out of my arms and down the path to the cliffs, flowers and feathers lopsided in his hair. I follow, like I should.

***

No surprises here: Lord Masamune has a headache in the morning and sends me off early. But since I really don’t think I’m going to morning drills with the pages, it’s early by hours, and I find myself wandering the cliffs just after sunrise. But the cliffs face mostly west and south, so everything is at my back, and the fields on the other side of the precipice are still in shadow.

And Kikuhime is sitting on the edge, with the sun at her back.

It’s early enough that she’s not completely dressed for the day, just a kimono and her sash, and her shoes kicked off to the side, resting against a jagged rock. Her hair isn’t done either, just down, without the gold coin ornaments. I don’t think I’ve ever seen how long it is before, or realized that it has a wave to it, that the ends stand out like tips of flame when they’re not twisted up on her head.

She looks up and wipes her face with her sleeve when she sees me. I think she must still be tired, but when I get close enough I can see the red in her eyes and the slight sheen of tears. I won’t mention it, or linger. I know how much she hates to cry; I’ve only caught her once before. But I can’t help saying her name, or settling down beside her.

“Shigenaga,” she says, and tries to smile. She puts her hand on top of mine, holds it to the rock beneath us. She’s telling me to stay.

I wouldn’t leave her.

“Yukinobu’s fine,” she says. “I mean, if you haven’t seen him this morning. You wouldn’t have, yet. He’s going to be fine.”

I nod. “Thank you.”

“He also said to tell you he’s sorry.”

“Sorry for dueling?”

“No, never. Sorry you had to be there with him. He saw you at the end and he said he knew you didn’t want to be there.”

I press my knuckles up into her palm. “I’ll check on him later. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” For a second, I think she’s going to lean her head on my shoulder, but no, she’s just wringing a crack out of her neck. And then she stares out over the cliff’s edge, her hand tense over mine but not quite holding it. “That idiot. He couldn’t have won, could he?”

“He could have,” I say quietly, “but it would have taken a lot of luck.”

“What, like that Tokugawa pig fighting fair?” She scoffs. “That would take a miracle.”

I wait, and nod, and wonder whether I should hold her.

“Why did Yukinobu have to do that?” She’s quieter than I’ve ever heard her, tenser. Maybe it’s because we’re sitting so close. “He could have gotten himself killed! Doesn’t he know that we’re all the family we have left? And if he did it then Daimitsu would have gotten it into his head too, or one of my sisters, and what good is all that honor if you’re not strong enough to win?”

“It isn’t good enough,” I agree. “I really am sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten you involved.”

“We were involved before you,” Kikuhime says. “That pig was just using it as an excuse. It’s not your fault.”

She tightens her knees to her chest, lets go of my hand to wrap her arms around them.

“I just don’t want there to be no more of us,” she says, louder, but muffled in her kimono. “And when Lord Masamune killed my father, he said it was up to me now, to be strong for everybody else, but I can’t fight everyone’s battles for them if they won’t let me, and--“ She chokes, fights down a gasp. She’s going to cry.

I put my arm around her, turn her face into my shoulder. That way, if she doesn’t want me to see it, we can both pretend.

“--and why couldn’t he just have fought me? Why couldn’t that pig just have fought me and lost and shut up about it?!”

I don’t have the answer for that. I shouldn’t say anything at all. But she’s trusting me to be here, and see her cry, and I think that’s even more strength than I’ve seen her show, and than I’ve ever shown anyone. So I hold her, and her tears seep through my gi onto my shoulder, and the sun warms our backs while neither of us says anything at all.

A hawk wheels overhead, startles us both. I let my hand slip, and she lifts her face away, and we both slide apart, creeping along the cliff’s edge.

“If you tell anyone about this, I’ll make you sorry,” she says. Her eyes are still swollen with tears, but, that’s doesn’t mean she won’t, or can’t, keep her word.

“I believe you,” I tell her, truly. “And if someone ever tortures it out of me, you can call me Kojuchiyo for the rest of my life.”

It’s strange, to see her laugh when she’s just been crying. Strange, but beautiful.

***

I end up going to morning drills after all; since Lord Masamune is still recovering from last night, and Lord Keiji is gone as suddenly as he appeared, there’s nowhere else for me to be. But I have a point to make, and a score to settle, and I walk down to the training ground only a few minutes late, pick up a bokken, and take my place at the front.

“Yeah, I heard it was a late night for the concubines,” Yorifusa says, loud enough for everyone nearby to hear. “I thought I heard someone begging. Did the boss keep you up?”

It’s almost not worth it. But I’ve got something to prove, and I’ll prove it right here.

I tuck the bokken into my belt, take hold of my ponytail, and quickly work my hair into a twist like I would if I were getting into the baths. It’s sloppy, but it’ll do, and right in front of everybody I stab it into place with a long gold spike, crested at the top with a chrysanthemum. The ornament is big, almost ostentatious, and I probably won’t wear it tomorrow, but it needed to be something everyone can see.

Of course Yorifusa laughs. “Is that what you were begging for, princess?”

“No,” I say, and get my bokken out again to join everyone on the next cut. “That was a gift from the Hero of Sekigahara.”

Everyone is quiet enough after that that I can hear Yorifusa struggling to smile.

“Yeah, and what’d you have to do to get it?” he asks, and it’s not just the pace of our cuts that make it sound forced.

I just smile and tell the truth. “I held his hair out of the way while he puked in my father’s garden.”


	7. Chapter 7

It’s really winter now, enough that we drill in the dojo instead of the courtyard, enough that Lord Masamune and I have doubled our futons for warmth, the way the younger pages do, but, well. There are certain differences. He doesn’t drape himself over me, but we do sleep close, warm enough that the idea of getting out from under the blankets is offensive to my skin.

I’ve been counting the days since Lord Masamune and I signed the oath, and it’s been three months. There’s another pages’ tournament tomorrow morning. Everyone else has been working hard since the last one, hoping to up his score. I’m not immune from that. Hidemune has a target on his back, and so do I, but Yorifusa’s the one I want to drive into the ground, and Mitsukaga has something to prove since this tournament will probably be his last before he moves up.

I tell Lord Masamune this, in the dark. He laughs, and says, “It is. Yours too.”

“What?”

“I’m taking you out early. **Got it?** ”

I shouldn’t be surprised. I still am, enough that I shift and accidentally let a gust of cold air under the blankets. “Yes, your Lordship.”

“Heh. You don’t think you’re ready.”

I hold the blankets closer, think about it for a moment. I’m not really one of the pages anymore--I haven’t been since this started, not really--but I can’t measure myself against the retainers and the officers yet and I only score hits on Lord Masamune once every ten passes. But if he says he’s pulling me out, he’s got a reason for it, and I have to trust him like I’ve trusted him so far.

No--not _have to_. Should. Because he’s earned it.

“I don’t,” I agree. “But you do, and that’s what matters.”

“No shit.” He nudges me with his shoulder, under the covers. He’s warmer than I am. “Start thinking you’re ready. You won’t be if you don’t.”

He’s right. He’s been right about everything so far, hasn’t he?

But it’s myself I have to trust, not him.

***

“That’s too small,” Yoshinao says before Yukinobu’s strapped me into my usual cuirass. “Use one of the black ones, Katakura.”

“Yes, sir.”

Yukinobu unclasps the side he’d only half-done, and I work my other arm out. “It really is your last one, isn’t it,” he says, more to the armor than to me.

“Looks like.” I take the last of the black cuirasses off its stand by the wall. It’s got interlocking square panels down the front, like my father’s, but still much smaller. Yorifusa and Mitsukaga both wear blacks, like the soldiers in the proper army. They have for the past three tournaments at least. I guess now I do too.

So does Hidemune, it turns out. He comes in to trade out his bracers, flashes me a grin. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Looks like it’ll be me and Yorifusa in charge from now on,” he says. It’s not meant to be a barb, I can tell from his tone, but there’s still a kind of edge to the way he leans against the wall, snapping his clasps into place. “So my old man’s bumping you up?”

I nod. I know he doesn’t mean it crudely. “Not you?”

“Not yet.” He shrugs, twists his wrist to test that the bracer is tight enough. “But Kojuro says not to worry.”

There are lines to read between. He’s trying to say, _I’ve been talking to your father, and you haven’t._ And of course he gets to call him just Kojuro, he’s Lord Masamune’s son, he can call anyone whatever he likes. So I say, “About what?”

“More stuff to learn. He says it’s a good preview for the rest of my life, so I should learn it now. Help him with the peasants and stuff.”

_Me,_ he’s saying, _not you._

“That’s good,” I say. It shouldn’t upset me. He wants it to, so it shouldn’t. “You could learn a lot from him.”

“Yeah.” He finishes with his bracer, smiles again. “So don’t feel like you’re leaving me behind, Katakura.”

“I never did.”

“Good. Looking forward to kicking your ass today.” There’s real bite in it, this time.

So I bite back. “Sorry to deny you the chance.”

He laughs, and goes, leaves me and Yukinobu alone with a bunch of empty shells of armor.

“He’s trying to psych you out,” Yukinobu says.

I take a page out of Lord Masamune’s book and say, “ **No shit.** ”

***

The tournament pitch is frozen, so cold that there’s no give in the dirt. That doesn’t stop Lord Masamune from drawing everyone outside, bundled into the stands in furs and thick jackets. Attendance isn’t down at all, and you’d think that so many people crowded together would make the place warmer, but no matter how thick this armor is I feel the chill in the wind.

While Yoshinao shuffles our chits, Lord Masamune comes out onto the pitch to cheers and a rush of applause. “ **Are you ready, guys?** ”

“Yeah!”

He grins, basks in the sound. “Got some now blood out here for you today. Oi, Mitsukaga, get over here.”

As soon as he waves, Mitsukaga steps out of line, to applause a little more cursory than what Lord Masamune got, but that’s to be expected. He bows, first to Lord Masamune and then generally to the crowd.

“So who out there wants this piece of work for an adjutant?”

Well, that definitely gets louder applause than before. At least four of the senior retainers pump their fists in the air, and their companies follow suit. Mitsukaga acknowledges it, salutes with his shinai and flourishes, and if there were a real blade it would flash, clouds or no clouds.

“Well, you’ll get your chance. Tamura Mitsukaga’s gonna party with the rest of us, starting today. **You see?** ”

“Yeah!”

Lord Masamune claps his hand to the back of Mitsukaga’s cuirass, but is still talking to everybody as much as to him. “So show ‘em what you got. Looks like you’ve got your pick of the retainers.”

Mitsukaga bows again, and shouts, like he should, “I thank you all! Please look kindly upon me!”

The stands ring out, and they should, as Mitsukaga takes his place back in the lineup. “And I’ve got one more,” Lord Masamune says, and even if I know what’s coming it doesn’t stop the dread in my gut. “Shigenaga, come here.”

He says it with a little cock of his head instead of his hands, probably because I know how to read that by now. _Don’t balk,_ he’s saying, _don’t get your fundoshi in a bunch_. So I step out to his side, and ignore the glares at the back of my head, because everyone else is whooping and cheering. I find my father in the stands, and watch him clap and smile, as broad as I could hope for.

What Hidemune said shouldn’t matter.

Too late.

“So who wants this one?” Lord Masamune says, and when the cheer goes up, he waves it down. “You can’t have him. He’s mine.”

I brace myself for laughter, behind me at least. But if someone does laugh, it’s drowned out in the rest, cheering just as loud and just the same as they did for Mitsukaga. And that’s what Lord Masamune wanted to show me.

“But you’ll be seeing plenty of Katakura Shigenaga,” he says, “and he’ll be seeing plenty of you.”

When I bow, and when I smile, it’s not because I should. It’s because I can’t keep the gratitude inside. I don’t thank everyone as loudly as Mitsukaga did, but they still hear me just fine.

Once I’m back in my place, Lord Masamune announces the prizes himself, instead of waiting for Yoshinao to do it: for second place, a wakizashi that once belonged to the Mogami clan, which is an even more generous than the helmet that Hidemune won last time. And for first place, a black filly. 

A horse. The winner gets a horse of his own.

There’s a target on my back, and now it’s glowing like a beacon.

***

The first match passes in a blur. The second, I actually have to pay attention to. Mitsukaga stands across from me, and it’s pure bad luck. I don’t want to knock him out in the second tier in his last tournament, not after everybody just cheered for him like that--but they cheered for me too, and they want me to do well just as much as him.

Right before Yoshinao calls the start, Mitsukaga assumes his stance and says, “Make it good.”

I assume mine, and nod, once.

There’s no time. It’s over in three hard strokes. I block from the top, then the side, then go under his backhand like I have with Lord Masamune for weeks now and come up behind him, slam my shinai into his lower back. I’ve never shown anyone but Lord Masamune and my father that trick before, and I give it to Mitsukaga now out of respect for his skill. He shouldn’t be eliminated in his last page tournament by any old strike.

And when he bows to me afterward, he mouths his thanks. He’ll get a good appointment, especially if I go on to win.

Hidemune wins the match after mine, thrashes his opponent into the ground. He hasn’t used the kata he beat me with last time in either of his matches so far. So he’s learning too, fighting second-by-second, letting go of the blade with one hand to get further reach in the other, trading off. I wonder what my father is teaching him.

After, he comes to me by the water cask, drinks from his cupped hands instead of the ladle and splashes his face. “Too bad I have to kick your ass next, Katakura. I wanted to see you in the finals.”

“You’ll see me in the finals,” I say. “From the bench.”

“From the stands, maybe. I’ve got to check with Kojuro after this, see if I’m doing that diagonal right.”

No matter how much I tell myself he’s just trying to psych me out, it still takes root. It’s like _not thinking about elephants_ , and suddenly there’s one in the room.

“Guess it’s one half a dozen or the other,” he says, stretching, “so I’ll get you first, and then Tokugawa. A rematch is a rematch, even if you just can’t beat me.”

And he’s going to get a rematch.

I don’t watch the first match of the semifinals. Somehow I know Yorifusa’s going to win. I sit in the equipment shed, shut my eyes, and remember all the passes I’ve lost to Lord Masamune and try not to think about anything else. I can’t clear my head, but I should do _something_ , build up a screen so that Hidemune’s game doesn’t work.

I don’t know if this match is tenser, slower, than the last time we fought because I’m less angry. I have just as much to prove then as I do now--if anything, more now--but he’s calm across from me and I don’t feel the same fury under my skin as I used to.

And when he blocks my first strike, it’s like fighting a different Hidemune, just as strong and just as flashy but more direct. I wonder if he thinks the same of me. Our shinai clash, twice, three parries in a row, and then we bind at the hilts. He shoulders into me and I hold my ground, and Yoshinao calls us apart, forces us to start a second pass.

He grits his teeth, and comes at me open like he’s got swords in both hands.

So I fight him like I fight his father, and don’t hold back.

He’s the one that looks to the stands this time, just before the end. It surprises us both when I clock him across the face on what would have been his father’s blind side. The blow spins his helmet around on his head, makes it look like a much harder strike than it was, like I’ve cracked his neck. But he takes the hit standing, only staggers onto his shinai, not to his knees.

I should offer him a hand up, and step forward to do it--but then he turns the point of his shinai in the dirt and sprays it in my face. It might have been a mistake, but when he straightens up to throw down his helmet and glare it’s not gracious, or humorous, or cocky like the Hidemune I know.

We bow to each other, and he’s a stranger.

They give me a few minutes to rest before the finals, and I spend them avoiding Yorifusa like he’s a leper. That’s a good excuse to find Hidemune and check on him, but aside from his discarded armor, I find nothing.

I don’t want to gloat. I’m not even sure I want to tell him we’re even now. I don’t think it’s true.

So I wind up across from Yorifusa on the pitch, shinai out, and he still has everything in the world to say.

“You afraid I’ll mess up your face?”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” I tell him. “But you should be.”

He laughs, slides into his stance, open and taunting. I know what to watch out for. “Oh? What should I be afraid of, princess?”

“That this fight has to be fair,” I say, and swing my shinai out in a wide arc to remind him, _everyone’s watching, everyone wants me to win_ , because if I win it means Lord Masamune chose right. “You’ve never been good at _fair_.”

He spits on the dirt, and it’s cold enough that it freezes. “I’ll give you fair.”

“No, Yorifusa. _I’ll_ give it to _you_.”

I expect another smart-ass remark, but no, he charges.

I’m on the defensive from the start. He’s a straightforward fighter, all offense, but strong and fast enough that he doesn’t have to play tricks--so when he does, it counts. I hold him off as best I can, try to find an opening--strike as hard as you can as soon as you can, I know, I _know_ , but he doesn’t give me a chance at all, just keeps barreling at me until the cheering in the stands is right in my ears, at my back. He’s relentless.

\--No wonder. Honda Tadakatsu trained him. And he’s going to try to beat me the same way.

Almost as soon as I think it, I shove the thought aside. It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. Nothing matters but not getting hit, and not getting hit means hitting him first, and hardest, and _now_.

I don’t care what it does to me. I don’t think about what it does to me. I swing back.

At his weapon, not at him.

And I do it hard enough to snap it in half.

The recoil is awful--I might have pulled something in my shoulder--but the look on his face is priceless. And since even if one shoulder is hurting, I still have two hands, and I level my shinai right at his nose, close enough that his breath beads on it in the cold.

I tell him to yield, and everyone hears it.

Yorifusa punches the dirt, and it cracks, but he does bow his head.

***

I name the filly Negi, which my father finds amusing. She’s still too small for me to ride, but my father and I bring her food from the garden to make sure she knows me. She’s all black except for a lopsided white collar around her neck and a jagged patch down her belly. If she rears, it looks like the crest on Lord Masamune’s helmet. I think his horse might be the father. She likes me, or at least she likes radishes. And apples.

I pat her sides, see how well she senses direction. She turns her head, almost her whole body almost as soon as I touch her. I should probably let one of the younger pages, or one of Lord Masamune’s sons ride her first so she gets used to it. I’ll bring it up with Lord Masamune later.

My father holds the gate for us when I let her into the corral to run. “You like her?”

She canters off to her mother, who shoos her with a nuzzle, like she’s saying _not now._ “She’s beautiful,” I say.

“You earned her. I was impressed with you today.”

“Thank you.”

He leans one hand on the fence, but not as if he needs to. We both watch the horses a while, and I think it might be a fine time to ask about Hidemune.

But my father shoulders his basket, now that it’s empty, and says, “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“All right.” Though I’m not sure why he’d say that, even if it’s true.

***

Lord Masamune has gotten it into his head to congratulate me personally.

This, apparently, means having me against the wall.

My shoulder’s still sore, but his grip kneads right to the knot, and I don’t mind his nails in my skin at all. He holds me bent to the wall, my kimono dangling by its sash around my waist, with one slick hand working into me and his cock hard and ready, waiting, against my hip. I’ve already gotten off once but that doesn’t stop me from moving to match his fingers, doesn’t stop me from looking forward to the rest.

“Yeah, you can take it,” Lord Masamune says in my ear, “you can take a lot more than that. Feels like you’re sucking me in, gorgeous.”

He twists his fingers, strokes inside, right at the place that breaks me. I’m still not sure I like what he’s saying but I want what he’s doing and it all goes south, makes me want to push back. I brace my hands on the wall as best I can--it doesn’t slide, it’s barred in place on the runner--spread and rock back to let more in.

His other thumb presses into my shoulder, right under my neck, hard. Something sears at the base of my skull, and no matter how I twist it doesn’t let up. I don’t want it to. I want it somewhere else. Lower. Now. “C’mon,” he says, “tell me you’re ready.”

“Yes.” My breath comes out as steam. I’d forgotten it’s that cold--the rest of me is burning. “Yes, your Lordship.”

“You gonna let me in?”

“Yes.”

“Gonna fuck me back with that tight ass of yours?”

“ _Yes._ ”

“Gonna show me just how much you can take--”

“Just _do it, damn you--_ ” Shit.

He laughs in my ear. I can’t take it back. He withdraws his fingers and I hold still, wait and shut my eyes and try not to blush.

But he bites the nape of my neck, aligns himself with me, and shoves in. “ **All right.** ”

I take everything. He groans into my back, another curse in that language of his, and one I should know but I can barely hear it for the blood pounding in my ears. I don’t even wait until he’s seated, just fuck him back like he wants me to, like _I_ want to, like it’s the only thing my body needs right now. He’s still got me by the shoulder and now that I’m moving under him he laughs, fixes the hand that had been in me against my thigh and sets a faster pace, guides me to match it. I do. “Keep up,” he says, scrapes my ponytail off the back of my neck with his chin. “C’mon, **keep up** , show me what’s mine.”

My heels skid on the floorboards. Sweat and oil drip down my legs, and it should be cold but it isn’t, nothing is. Everything’s fire. His hips snap and strike deep and I need my hand but can’t let go of the wall, not if I want it to keep feeling this good.

He doesn’t stop talking but the words get shorter, harsher, panted right into my skin. Every strike makes me feel bent double, stretched and raw and racing and I wrench back my shoulders, twist so maybe his hand will slip and _touch me_.

“Heh.” His voice is all teeth on the nape of my neck. “Something you want, Katakura Shigenaga?”

Shit. This. “Yes.” I barely manage to say it, to say anything, I can hardly breathe.

He shoves in, deep and seating, tents his hands to claws. “I’ll give it to you if you tell me.”

I can’t get out the words for three long thrusts, can’t do anything but meet him, tighten for him, for me. “I--I want to get off again.” I bend my head to the wall, brace it there like I could force more back, make room for his hand. “Touch me. Your Lordship. Please.”

He does, without a word.

It only takes a minute once he folds his hand around me, once he’s jerking me off even faster than he’s thrusting in. I try to meet both, match both, and trying’s almost as good as making it, it’s enough to make fire burst behind my eyes and everything else to let go.

I finish in his hand, and he finishes in me while I’m still reeling, staggered against the wall like after a spar I haven’t lost.

Lord Masamune doesn’t pull out right away. He thumbs at my hair, wipes his other hand on my thigh, catches his breath and rocks against me once more, like he isn’t quite done. “You’re getting the hang of this.”

It’s almost funny, and I almost laugh. “You’re a persistent teacher, your Lordship.”

For a moment, Lord Masamune goes stock-still. I can’t see his face, and I’d like to know whether he’s surprised or offended or both. He scoffs, them swats at my ponytail again, peels the looser strands out of the sweat on my neck. “You need that,” he says, earnest. Amused. I know that tone.

I shouldn’t feel insulted. So I don’t. I genuinely don’t.

He pulls out, stretches audibly behind me. Air snaps through his bones like the stove-fire in the corner. I still don’t feel cold, just drained and slick and cool, but I come away from the wall, get my kimono off--it’s going to need a thorough cleaning tomorrow--and clean myself off with one of the warm towels. He’s doing the same.

He likes what I can take, and wants what I give back.

I snuff out the lanterns, make my way to the futons in the dark. “You ready for tomorrow?” he asks, once I’ve settled down under the blankets. His body is cool against mine, and jagged, but I know we’ll both warm up once we’ve been under long enough.

“About that...”

He laughs. “You’ll get the hang of that too. Even if it doesn’t feel as good as this. But get some sleep. You’re gonna need it.”

“Yes, your Lordship,” I say, and turn on my side. “Goodnight.”

He idles with my hair beneath the covers for a moment, but puts it down before I drift off.

***

I dress and arm Lord Masamune in the morning, the same as any other. Instead of a page’s gi, I wear one of my nicer yukata and hakama, and it’s so cold that Lord Masamune gives me a lined coat that’s only a little large on me, though once I belt it on it looks nicer than I expected it to. I brush my hair and make sure the ponytail is tight, since I’m sure we’ll still be training later. And I follow him down the hall once we leave the room behind, since there’s still time before I presumably have to be at breakfast.

“So, your Lordship,” I ask him, “what’s my post?”

He grins, bright and sharp. “Who said anything about a post? You’re with me. **You see?** ”

I don’t get to answer before the servants in front of us slide the doors open to the main hall, where the senior retainers and generals--including my father--are already at breakfast together. Two of them are already arguing about taxes, loud enough that I should have heard them in the corridor.

Lord Masamune takes his place on the dais, snaps at the quarreling retainers to cut it out until after he’s had some goddamn tea. My father’s place is at Lord Masamune’s right, as always, and he signals to me to pour. So I do, and look around for somewhere to sit.

There’s a vacant cushion and an ornate tray just off the dais, behind but between my father and Lord Masamune. From the tilt of Lord Masamune’s head, it’s mine.

I kneel.

***

**END SEASON ONE**


	8. Chapter 8

“Too small,” Lord Masamune says, “and not flashy enough. Try the green.”

“Yes, boss,” the armorer says, and pats me on the shoulder to tell me to stay still while he unlaces the cuirass.

“Leave it to you to call that not flashy enough,” the envoy from the Shimazu clan says. “You wouldn’t know good taste if it bit you in the ass.”

“Say that again, Musashi. I dare you.”

“Sure, I’ll say it again. I could paint better prints than that with grass stains and dogshit.”

It’s autumn again, it’s been a year now, and Lord Masamune insists that I have armor made to fit me. I’d be more honored than concerned, but Lord Masamune has also decided that the only time to have me fitted for armor is while he conducts a meeting, and so it looks a little something like this:

Lord Masamune and the Shimazu envoy, Miyamoto Musashi, are having sake and skewered meat at a setup in the corner. Lord Musashi is a big eater, but not a big man, and so he’s holding the skewers over the little table-fire two at a time, and Lord Masamune, not to be outdone, is roasting them in threes like with his swords, though eating them much slower. They’re waited on by Toshichiyo, who has grown up a lot in the last year and is starting to wear his hair long like mine, and Lord Masamune is on his fourth bowl of sake and already listing sideways despite it still being late afternoon. I’m standing on a pedestal in the corner, with two sempsters and an armorer making alterations, because Lord Masamune insists that I be here for this meeting and that as long as I’m just standing still I should listen.

This is my life.

Lord Masamune pokes Lord Musashi in the cheek with his skewers. “Shut your trap unless you got something to swallow.”

“Ha, ha,” Lord Musashi says, with chips of chewed beef on his teeth. But he does swallow, after that, and goes on. “So I guess I should start talking.”

One of the sempsters drapes a much louder silk print over my shoulder, bands a panel of bright green lacquered armor over it, and looks at Lord Masamune for approval. He waves it off. Honestly, I’m relieved.

“So talk,” he says to Lord Musashi. “You didn’t come this far just to cross swords and roast a cow.”

“It’s a good cow.”

“As much as I don’t mind you buttering me up, it’s starting to sound like bad news.”

“Bad news is what you make it,” Lord Musashi says, rolling his empty skewer in the air. “The question is, are you as antsy as Sanada Yukimasa?”

Lord Masamune tilts his skewers into the fire, and one of them catches at the tip.

“Kid’s getting hungry, is all I’m saying.” Lord Musashi spears another two slices of meat, keeps waving them around as he talks. “Gramps doesn’t mind listening, and we’ve got a couple more people with open ears down there. Mercs. Friends of yours. And I figure, since you’ve got the rest of the tiger cubs up here, they might want to hear what he’s got to say. And you too, Masamune. No one understands the spirit of the tiger better than you do. No one who’s still alive, anyway.”

I’m not sure how this is even possible, or if I really saw it. But a flicker of something like lightning ripples through Lord Masamune’s arm and suddenly three wooden skewers are stabbed through the table like funeral incense.

“Looks like I shouldn’tve told you to talk,” he says. They’re fighting words, harder than the taunts he uses when he teaches me or spars with my father. The sempsters and the armorer go stock-still next to me, and the cloth in their hands doesn’t even rustle.

Not that Lord Musashi seems scared. Tense, maybe, but not scared. “C’mon,” he says, leaning almost into the fire. “We all know you’re bored out of your skull up here. Six years without starting shit up isn’t like you. What happened to you wanting to take Japan for yourself?”

“I’d shut up if I were you,” Lord Masamune snarls. “Then again, if I were you I wouldn’t have the damn sense.”

“And if I were you I’d stop pretending I’m any different from everyone else who buckled under Ieyasu’s bullshit.”

That same crackle of lightning lances across the table, right through the carved letters on Lord Masamune’s eyepatch. His hand’s on his swords, and there’s death in his eye, and I may not know everything I have to yet but I do know that this really isn’t how a diplomatic meeting is supposed to go.

So I cough, and grab one of the panels of armor from one of the sempsters, hold it up against my body like I’m asking _how about this instead?_

Thankfully, Lord Masamune looks up, squints his good eye, and laughs at me through his teeth. “For fuck’s sake. Give him something with **style**.”

“You’ll have a hard time finding it nowadays,” Lord Musashi says. He withdraws a scroll from his kimono and sets it on the table, next to the bottle of sake. “Not if you don’t make it yourself.”

***

Kikuhime has another suitor today. Well, had. The last I heard, he was riding back to Edo on the first carriage that would take him, since riding a horse wasn’t exactly an option after what she did to his leg.

This makes eight in the past year. Not that I’ve been keeping track, but six have come straight from Edo, sons of the shogun’s close circle, and two from Shikoku.

“Idiots,” Kikuhime says. Lord Masamune and the others have gone off for a midnight jaunt to the hot springs, which I’m thankful to be excused from. I shouldn’t leave the main house--he’ll want me when he gets back--but Kikuhime hasn’t left for her quarters yet, and is sitting on the porch with her sandals in her hand, swinging them absently by the straps. “It’s like they’re trying to humiliate me. Why else would the Tokugawa insist on marrying me? Wasn’t the rest enough?”

“They do want to be strong,” I say. “It’s not as malicious as you think.”

She sighs, tosses her shoe down to the grass. “It feels like it.”

“If it were malicious, they wouldn’t keep trying.”

“Well they should stop, unless they all want to be thrashed into the ground.”

There’s space next to her. I watch her hand hover awkwardly over the ledge, try not to think too much about whether she’s leaving it vacant for me, and end up not sitting just yet. But there’s a post close by, so I lean on it, and my yukata tightens over my pockets. Right--the scroll. “Kikuhime--”

“Yes?”

“--I don’t know if Lord Musashi has talked to you yet, but he brought word from your brother in Kyushu.”

She swivels around so fast I almost expect a naginata in her hands. “From Yukimasa?”

I nod, and hand her the scroll. She unfurls it and starts reading it immediately. I warn her as quickly as I can, “Lord Musashi might have something personal for you and your sisters, but this is what he gave Lord Masamune. I’ve read it, and--“

“He’s _what_?”

“--requested Lord Masamune’s support if he leaves Kyushu and challenges the shogun.”

“Yes, that’s--and--Yukimasa, _no_.” She tightens her fists around the scroll, hard enough that I reach out to her to tell her _don’t tear it_ but the words themselves don’t come. “No. It’s too soon.”

“Too soon?”

“I want to crush them too, I understand how much he wants to pay the shogun back for what he did, but it’s too soon--it won’t work, we need to rebuild the clan first and we’ll never rebuild the clan if we die out trying to kill the shogun. And if Yukimasa goes, Yukinobu will want to go too, and my sisters and even the little ones.”

She’s right, they would. I would too, if she asked. “And if Lord Masamune supported him?”

She shuts her eyes, and her teeth flash past her bottom lip. “It might be enough. But does he?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “He was hostile with Lord Musashi, but you know Lord Masamune. Even if he decided to back them up it would have liked it to be his idea. And Lord Musashi wasn’t nice about it.” Come to think of it, he was about two syllables from calling Lord Masamune a coward, and if I’m supposed to be above taking that bait Lord Masamune should be too.

“I have to find out if he does.” The scroll snaps in Kikuhime’s fist, cracks against the grain of the paper. “If he doesn’t do anything, or if he stands with the shogun against my brother--”

“He wouldn’t stand with the shogun.”

“Wouldn’t he?” She gives me back the scroll, though from how tight her hand is around it she might not let go of it after all. “He stood against my father.”

I can’t say no to that. And I shouldn’t say no to her.

“I’ll go to the baths and demand the truth from him right now!” she says, and I know she’ll do it.

“You don’t want to see that.”

“It’s not as if I haven’t seen a naked man before,” she says.

I don’t want to think about that. “But not that many, and not that drunk.”

It takes a moment, but her cheeks flush red enough to see clearly, even in this low light. “You have a point.”

I take the scroll back, smooth out the new creases she left in it. “I’ll talk to him when he’s sober.” I know there won’t be much opportunity to talk tonight, or at least not to talk back. But Kikuhime doesn’t have to hear that.

She nods, and thanks me, and lowers her head. I think, for a moment, that she’s going to bow, but instead she just leans her forehead against my thigh. I feel her breathe. She can’t have meant that, and I should move, but her skin is so warm through my clothes, and she must not know what it looks like but I do.

I don’t know whether I’m lifting my hand to touch her hair or to push her away.

In the end, I don’t do either. I back into the pole so sharply that the back of my head smacks against it instead. Maybe my reflexes haven’t gotten any better in the last year after all. But she pulls back, and laughs at me, and I should probably go.

“Shigenaga--”

“I promise,” I say, “I’ll talk to him,” and leave.

***

Lord Masamune wakes up twice in the middle of the night, once to relieve himself and once to relieve something else. It’s not the first time he’s woken me up for this, and I don’t exactly mind--it means I’ll probably have permission to sleep in a little tomorrow--but the way he’s holding my wrists and biting my throat, you’d think we were sparring instead. Not that that’s unusual for Lord Masamune, just unusual for it to be happening in pitch-blackness, with only his voice and the textured scars around his right eye to assure me that it’s him. But it is, and I told him I want this, and I do. 

And he’s jerking us both off so fast and tight that I can’t think about anything else.

I can’t even keep track of what he’s mouthing into my skin, what language the curses are in. He pants into the hollow of my throat, clamps his teeth on my collarbone like he could tear it right out of the joint. I wrench down but not away, I don’t want _away_ but I don’t want that pain, so I push back against his grip and he holds tighter. I should be stronger. I want to be stronger. Not to break free, to fight back.

\--This is a fight, isn’t it.

I brace my heels on the futon, thrust up into his hand, twist out of the way of his mouth. I can’t kiss him or get my hands free but I do have my feet and I wrap one leg around his, force the pace. He laughs, just once, but doesn’t stop, so I don’t either, and this time when he bites into me I ram my shoulder into his forehead.

He comes before I do.

We settle into the futons after, and I have to untangle my legs from his since he’s collapsed on top of me at an awkward angle. Sweat cools on my skin, but he’s warm on the other side of it, and I wish I could see his face in the dark. I think he must be smiling, though. He sounds it. “I think you got me pretty hard.”

“Your head?”

“Yeah.”

“Should I light a lantern?”

“Nah, just get a towel.” He heaves himself off me, sits back on his haunches at the foot of the futon, and grabs one of the ones we used earlier. There should be another within reach, but it’ll take some scrambling to find. “How awake are you?”

“What do I need to be awake for?”

“Depends on whether I can sleep or not,” Lord Masamune says.

After groping around for a couple of seconds, I find one of the other towels from earlier, and get myself clean enough to lie back down. And then it hits me that Lord Masamune is saying, in his way, that he’s troubled enough that can’t sleep.

So I guess now is as good a time to bring it up as any.

“Is Lord Musashi still here?”

“Are you kidding? He’ll be here until he’s drunk everything in the storehouse and painted the cliffs.”

I let him lie back down and ask, carefully, “So he doesn’t have to bring Yukimasa’s request to anyone else?”

For a moment, the room is completely silent and still. I can feel him glaring.

“There’s no one else to bring it to,” Lord Masamune says. “Unless he wants to beg in Hokkaido.”

A chill races down my back, but I don’t pull the covers up yet. “Is there really no one else?”

“No one else to what? No one else pissed off at Ieyasu enough to fuck this peace? Maybe. No one else who wants to throw it in with a tiger cub and climb up from the south until every who _does_ want peace is happy to put them down? No.”

I shut my eyes. It makes no difference. “So you refuse.”

“I didn’t say that. I said that there’s no one suicidal enough to throw it in with the kid.”

“So you accept?”

He scoffs. “Since when are you playing politics?”

“I’m not, I--” I can’t really say what I am doing, though, and pull up the covers instead. “I couldn’t tell this afternoon, that’s all.”

“Then learn to read between the lines.”

“I am.” And I’m doing it right now. “Is Yukimasa going to march no matter what?”

“Probably. He’s a Sanada. Knowing when to quit isn’t in the skill set.”

I’d smile at that, but my shoulders are still cold, even under the blanket, and Lord Masamune is out of reach. “Is that what happened with his--”

No. No, I won’t ask that, not now. 

Never mind. He knows.

“Yeah,” he says, and even if I can’t see his teeth I know they’re bared. “Yeah, that’s what happened.”

His breathing is low, and not as near as it was, and I know I shouldn’t ask any more.

He sleeps fairly soon after that. I don’t.

***

“So, nothing,” Kikuhime says after one look at my face. It seems like everyone’s better at reading between the lines than I am. Her sisters are training, now that the pages are gone, and it’s the first time I’ve found her all day but I shouldn’t wait any longer.

“Not nothing.” I keep my voice down, and I know it’s hard for her to do the same but at least her sisters are occupied. “Do the others know about the letter?”

“Just Yukinobu. What do you mean, not nothing?”

“I mean his Lordship’s being cagey about it, but I asked.” I sigh, and since she’s leaning on her naginata--wait, when did I get taller than her? I’ll deal with that later. I just lean a little and make sure I can speak right into her ear. “He said he didn’t refuse but didn’t accept it either. He just said he wasn’t ‘throwing it in’ with him. So no alliance.”

She grits her teeth, but turns away from her sisters, shifts her naginata to her other hand to hide her grimace behind the blade. I know that trick, my father does it too. And she opens her mouth to speak, but something whirls and grinds overhead, familiar and ominous.

It couldn’t be, so of course it is.

Honda Tadakatsu wheels through the sky above the training ground, then careens down onto the field. Someone leaps off his back, and skids in the dirt on his heels and the butt of a spear. It’s at least ten feet long, and I probably only notice because the gold armor he’s wearing is so blinding that I can’t look at the rest of him.

“Which of you fine young ladies is Sanada Kikuhime?” the man bellows. The Tokugawa clover crest flashes on the chest of his armor, and glints off his teeth. It only occurs to me a second later that I’ve been--well, not insulted, but he probably meant it to be one, which is just as bad.

Kikuhime steps out of the arc of my arm and grips her naginata in front of her. “I am.”

He stays on his knee, but takes off his helmet and lays it at her feet. I remember what Lord Keiji said about people who know they’re good-looking and how to use it--this is apparently what he meant, though I can’t say I think much of this man myself. He’s older than I am but not much, and his haircut is ridiculous, long in front and short in the back.

“I am fortunate to behold you,” he says to Kikuhime, “and see that my brothers and cousins have not exaggerated your beauty as they must have exaggerated your strength.”

“They haven’t exaggerated anything!” Kikuhime says. “I defeated all of them on known and honorable terms. Their wounds should speak for themselves.”

“Wounds, fine lady, that you have already reprised on my heart with your beauty!”

“Then let us call the duel done before it has begun.”

“Only if you concede the victory to me.”

“Never! Which one are you?”

“I am Tokugawa Yorinobu, tenth son of our shogun, and I have come to take your hand in marriage.”

...yes, this guy is for real.

“Only if you can earn it,” Kikuhime says, and flourishes her naginata so that the blade is steady right between Yorinobu’s eyes. “Tomorrow at dawn!”

He doesn’t flinch.

Behind him, Tadakatsu grinds his gears.

It could be worse. It could be the machine.

***

Tomorrow at dawn is dry and cold, and Lord Masamune is wearing a cloak over his armor. He calls the match himself, probably because most of the pages and Yoshinao are at breakfast, and he and my father are witnesses enough. That doesn’t mean we’re the only ones watching: Tadakatsu looms in the corner, with Yorifusa sitting on his shoulder, and all the Sanada sisters are clustered in the otherwise empty stands like birds on a branch.

“Last chance to back down,” Lord Masamune says, instead of the ceremonial words.

Tokugawa Yorinobu doesn’t respond at first, just looks across the pitch at Kikuhime and smiles. I hate him. After a long moment, he turns to Masamune and gasps, apologizes, “Forgive me, Lord Masamune, I thought you were talking to Kikuhime! Certainly I would never withdraw from such a match before it started.”

“Looks like we’ve got nothing more to discuss.” Lord Masamune backs up, produces his pocket-watch in one hand, and readies the other to cut a slice through the air between them with his open palm. “You’ve got fifteen minutes to land a scratch on her. Clock starts.... **now.** ”

Kikuhime barely gives Lord Masamune time to get out of the way. Her naginata slices right where Yorinobu’s knees were a second ago, and Yorinobu stabs his spear into the ground and vaults over her head, clear to the other side of the pitch. “Fifteen minutes,” he says, still crouched after landing. “A trifle to endure!”

I know his tactics. All it takes is one breath and I know exactly how this fight will go, and it’s not the way any of the others went. He’ll use his reach and his stamina, and never attack, and make Kikuhime burn herself out until the last second when he’ll finally strike. It’s admirable. It’s despicable. It doesn’t matter how strong she is when the rules of the game only apply to her.

It might work.

I can’t say anything about it. I tear my eyes away from the match to look up at my father, and just one look at his face tells me he noticed it too, probably before I did. On the pitch, Yorinobu dodges and whirls out of Kikuhime’s reach, parrying only when he has to, and no matter how she yells and swipes and tears at him he does nothing but resist. The smile on his face disgusts me. I want to shatter it like Yorifusa’s nose, want to charge onto the pitch and hold him still so Kikuhime can run him through.

She’d never forgive me if I did, and I know it.

Minutes pass. Her strikes slow and the arc of her weapon widens. She’s caught on to his game too by now, and I know it, but no matter what she says and how she swings she can’t drop her guard. I grip the rail because I can’t ask my father to let me hold his hand. Another minute, and I might grind out my own back teeth. And Yorinobu is laughing at her between blocks and vaults, telling her how lovely she is and that if she lays her weapon down he won’t hurt her.

Her next strike could take his head off his shoulders, if he were still standing there. One of her sisters is crying. Yorifusa whoops and cheers and nearly falls off of Tadakatsu’s shoulder, and Lord Masamune and my father just stand, and watch, and say nothing, do nothing--

There can’t be more than a minute to go.

From this far away, I can’t tell if the streaks through the grime on Kikuhime’s face are sweat or tears. She braces herself, swings one last time, and when Yorinobu beats her weapon back it’s all she can do to keep standing. The coin ornaments in her hair are lopsided, her grip on the naginata slack.

Yorinobu readies his spear, not at her throat, but like it’ll be there soon enough. “Do you concede?”

With a breath it hurts to watch her take, she shouts, “Never!”

And this time, when she whirls her naginata over her head, it is on fire.

I blink. Yorinobu does too, I think. But it means nothing for me, and everything for him, and she clocks him across the helmet with a burning blade, as bright as the sun.

I’ve never seen anything like it before. From the way he shouts and chokes, neither has Yorinobu. But he’s shouting and choking into the dirt of the pitch, a seared and cauterized cut across his face, and Lord Masamune calls the time. It’s over. I’m choking on my own heart.

Her sisters barrel out of the stands, swarm her and hold her before she falls to her knees. Yorifusa jumps down from Tadakatsu and calls foul, and Lord Masamune goes to deal with him. My father hasn’t been at my side for almost a minute and I know he knows more about what just happened than I do, but I can’t ask, can’t move, can’t speak.

I should be glad for her. I _am_ glad for her. She called on power she didn’t know she had, and turned it against someone she hated. She doesn’t have to marry that man. She fought him off with her own strength.

But I’ll never match it, and now I know for sure.

***

That night, at dinner, Lord Musashi shows off his painting and calligraphy. Lord Masamune is drunk enough that he doesn’t have to pretend to care, but I do, and pretty soon I’m the only one who does. I don’t know much about art, or even color, but Lord Musashi says that’s just fine and explains things to me step-by-step, why this shade works here, why this kanji should look more violent than the next. I hate to say it, but he’s more patient than Lord Masamune, even if he talks like a yokel.

“All right, this one,” Lord Musashi says, “this one I finished in Kaga when I passed through on the way here.” It’s another still life, flowers and reeds, though it looks a little familiar. “You see how the straight lines in the reeds balance out the petals?”

I do, sort of, so I don’t feel like I’m faking it anymore when I say he’s right.

“And _this_ one, I think you’ll like a little more,” he says, “same shape, but a little easier to wrap your noggin around.”

Looking at the paintings side-by-side, I see exactly what he means. The upright figure is a young warrior with short spears in either hand, and the arcing figure is a cloaked ninja with red hair and shuriken where the flowers should be. The composition of the picture is just as--well, natural--as the flowers and reeds in the still life.

“You see strength like this every day,” Lord Musashi says. “It’s not always art, but you see it. You just have to know how to look.”

I keep looking, stack the images up in my mind--

\--and then Lord Masamune swipes the picture off the table.

Lord Musashi turns, as cocky as he was yesterday afternoon. “Like it?”

“Get out,” Masamune growls.

“Give it back--“

“ **Get out,** ” he says again, “or I’ll forget it’s my own fucking house.” His hand is on his swords, and I know that even as drunk as he already is he’ll have no trouble holding them, not now.

Lord Musashi keeps that grin on his face, but swipes up the rest of his artwork and folds it back into his leather file. “That’s right,” he says, “your house, your rules,” and backs off without bowing.

“Make sure he finds his way to the stables,” Lord Masamune tells me, “he’s had more than you think he has if he’s that much of a damn fool,” and I bow and run off, as he says.

Lord Musashi doesn’t keep that far ahead, knows his way around, and mutters more to himself than he does to me. I shouldn’t listen. That’s never stopped me before.

“Always gotta be your way, does it, Masamune,” he says. “See how far that gets you this time.”

***

By the time I make it back to Lord Masamune’s--well, our--rooms, I’m surprised to see anyone but the guards awake. I knock, since I’m not in there already. 

My father opens the door from the inside. He doesn’t even open it the whole way, but I know from the light that not all of the lamps are lit.

“You should stay in my room tonight,” he says. “I’m sorry to displace you.”

I’m about to say I understand, when Lord Masamune cuts in from the background. “Gorgeous,” he slurs, “izzat you?”

My father winces. I don’t blame him. “Yes, Lord Masamune, it’s Shigenaga. I’m giving him the night off.”

“Like hell you are, Kojuro, I’m the One-Eyed Dragon and I make the rules here. It’s my house. My city. Mine. He’s mine.” Something clatters and shuffles, probably him, but the way my father is turned I can’t see past the door. “ **Shit.** ”

Yes, something just broke. And spilled. And splashed, which means Lord Masamune might have stepped in it.

My father sighs. “As I said, Shigenaga. Stay in my rooms for the night. I apologize.”

“It’s fine,” I say. And I may get chewed out for taking orders from him instead of Lord Masamune, but from what I can guess Lord Masamune won’t remember any of this in the morning.

Lord Masamune curses again, loudly. And then says, distinctly, “It won’t burn. Kojuro. It won’t burn.”

“You don’t want to burn it,” my father says, and snaps the door shut in my face before I can get a look at it or even say good night. “Lord Masamune, put that down.”

“He looks better on fire,” I hear through the walls. “He looks more like him on fire.”

I can’t shut my ears, but I know it’s not my place to listen, and I leave.

It might be the strong and unfamiliar smell of my father’s room, or everything else that’s happened today, but I don’t rest at all.


	9. Chapter 9

I’ve never gone out riding before dawn, aside from running away. It’s not like I’ve ever had the reason, or the opportunity, or, well, a horse. Negi’s just barely big enough to carry me now--she’s growing faster than I am, everyone says--and I don’t race her against Lord Masamune since I’m still getting used to riding her. But she’s mine, so I don’t have to ask anyone’s permission to take her out this morning, and that’s exactly what I’ll do.

I think she enjoys this ride even more than I do. It’s still dark, and silent except for her hooves and the rustling leaves, and she gallops fast enough that it sprays wet grass up to my ankles. We ride along the cliffside until it’s too rocky, too dangerous, but I could honestly keep going north until I left Sendai behind, until the mountains and then the sea that separates us from Hokkaido. I’m sure Negi would take me. I wonder if it counts as deserting if I don’t actually leave Oshu. I’m definitely too tired to be thinking about this. So I ride hard instead, until Negi’s gasping for breath as much as I am, and turn back toward the city when the sun starts to rise.

I must have gone out farther than I thought, and have to follow the river home. By the time I get to the stables, it’s already past dawn, and if I had stayed with Lord Masamune last night I would probably be putting him back to bed about now to stave off the hangover. I wonder if my father is taking care of that. Of course he is. He’s probably done that more times than I have, on even worse nights than last night. He must be at least as tired as I am.

So I stable Negi, and feed her a radish as big as my hand, and completely miss that Kikuhime is waiting for me on the other side of the stall.

“Kikuhime--”

“Shigenaga, can we talk? If you have a moment, I mean.”

If Lord Masamune wants me, I’m already late, so “Yes, I can stay. Congratulations on yesterday.” My father told me that he arranged for Kikuhime to have a new teacher. She deserves it.

She nods, thanks me. She isn’t dressed for the day yet, but her hair is off her face. I don’t think she could sleep either--she doesn’t look it, especially not around the eyes. I wonder if she’s still feeling that fire from yesterday. If she is, I envy her. “This is about that.”

I grit my teeth. “About fighting him?”

“About fighting in general.” Her fists tighten, curl up into her sleeves. “About fighting me. About you fighting me.”

“I can’t,” I say, before my thoughts even catch up with me. But they say _I can’t_ too, and _I’ll lose_ , and _you don’t want me_. Me, fight Kikuhime? I’d lose. I’d make an ass of myself in front of everyone there just like all those Tokugawa, and everyone else will hear about it, and Lord Masamune will finally get that I’m not strong enough to succeed my father. It’s not the problem of losing to a girl, she’s stronger than I am and we both know it and her being a girl doesn’t matter. I’m sure the Tokugawa would love to commiserate with me on that.

But I don’t want to lose to her because she’s _her_. Because I want to win. And I can’t.

“Yes you can,” she says, “just challenge me and I’ll accept and--”

“You’re that desperate for it not to be a Tokugawa that you’ll throw it to me, is that it?”

“How dare you!” I can’t stand seeing her face like this, so I look away, but she grabs me by the hair and forces me back. “I would never throw you a match.”

“Then you’ll just beat me into the ground and waste your time. I’m not strong enough for you, Kikuhime,” and I never will be, “so you’ll have to find someone else to humiliate.”

“Humiliate?” she spits. “You think you’re the one who’s being humiliated here?”

“I guess asking me to bail you out of your oath must be humiliating,” I say, because I can’t think of any other reason for her wanting me to lose so much. “I’m sorry.”

She still has me by the hair. She doesn’t pull it, though I know that if she did she could lay me out flat, or burn it, burn everything. I have to look her in the eyes like this, unless I close them, and I know that she hates me enough that she could destroy me. I wish she didn’t. But it’s just the truth. I can’t beat her. And she should know it, and accept it, and stop--

“You idiot!” She yanks, hard, and it nearly throws me into the next stall. One of the horses whinnies and stamps the ground. “You spineless idiot!”

“I’m not spineless, I’m sensible!” And I won’t rise to her bait. I know she’s going to call me a coward and try and goad me into this. “There’s no point in fighting you if I can’t win.”

“No wonder you can’t win, you coward!”

She’s baiting me. I can’t fall for it. I bite down on anything I could possibly say to that and let it go. I have to. I can’t do this. “Fine, I am a coward.”

“And you’ll be a coward for the rest of your life!” She throws my hair into my face and storms out, and I don’t blame her for a second. 

Negi stamps and whinnies, and noses the back of my head. There’s horse-spit on my neck. I know how she feels.

***

I completely miss breakfast, which is of course my own damn fault, and when I get back to Lord Masamune’s rooms to change my clothes he’s already left. I should thank my father for taking care of it when I run into him, whenever that will be, since I still have to train with Lord Masamune for most of the rest of the morning.

The more time I have to think about it, the less I think riding was a good idea.

But it’s too late now, and I get dressed, run by the kitchens to rush a bowl of rice and a cup of soup, and barge into the dojo with miso on my teeth.

“Great, you’re here,” Lord Masamune says, without a _good morning_. “Now go back to the room and start packing.”

I haven’t even stopped panting yet. “Packing?”

“We’re going to Shikoku,” he says.

I blink. “Shikoku.”

“Did you hit your head or something? Shikoku.”

“When did you decide this?”

“Breakfast. Now go pack. And I mean your stuff too, not just mine. I want us out of here tomorrow morning. **You see?** ”

No, not really, but I tell him “Yes, your Lordship,” anyway. And I bow, and turn back out the door, and I know I’ll have to consult with someone, probably my father, about what to pack and how long we’re going and whatever else it means--

“And one more thing,” Lord Masamune says. “I’ve already laid out a couple things for you to take. Don’t pack them, just get used to them and put them on. Got it?”

“Yes, your Lordship.” It’s probably the armor from yesterday, though I don’t know how they could have made it in such a short time and I’m not looking forward to any of those loud prints, especially if we’re charging into-- “Your Lordship?”

“Less talking, more packing.”

“Are we going to Shikoku to fight?”

He scoffs. “Fight, yes. War, probably not. But you never know.” And that grin of his doesn’t make me optimistic, but there’s nothing I can do about it, so I bow again, and don’t.

I take my time going back to the rooms, since I rushed the way here. _Shikoku._ If we’re not going by boat, which I suspect we’re not, we’ll have to ride across all of Honshu. I’ve never even been out of Oshu. By the time we get back, it will probably be spring again, and I’ll be eighteen.

My futon is rolled up against the wall as it should be, but it seems like a background for what’s in front of it: a display with a single sword in a blue and gold sheath, and the guard is carved with whorls of dark smoke. I recognize it from Shiroshi: it was my grandfather Kagenaga’s, and rested above his house shrine until, presumably, now. The note tied to the hilt reads, in Lord Masamune’s hand, _A Little Dragon needs claws. Start with one, we’ll see how you do._

As nicknames go, _Little Dragon_ isn’t much better than _Gorgeous_ , but it’s a hell of a lot better than _Kojuchiyo_ and I’ll take it.

I’m sure Lord Masamune can forgive me going through a few forms with the sword before I start packing. So I do, and it’s balanced, only a hair heavier and longer than I’m used to, the grip easy and unyielding under my palms. The blade slivers the air so much quicker than a bokken or a shinai does, but I’m steady enough with it that nothing slips.

We’re going to Shikoku to fight, he said.

The door slides open without anyone knocking when I’m right in the middle of a kata. No one except Lord Masamune or me should be walking in here without knocking, so I turn to the door and sheathe the sword and bow to him--

And Hidemune says, “Heh, where’d you get that?”

“It’s my grandfather’s,” I say, too quickly to sound anything but defensive. “What are you doing here?”

“The old man said there’s something in here for me,” he says, snaps the door shut behind him, and starts rooting around. “You sure it’s not the sword?”

Come to think of it, “Honestly, no.” I sheathe it quickly and put it back in its place on the display. “There was a note. If it’s yours, I’m sorry, it was by my futon.”

Hidemune comes over, says “No hard feelings,” and kneels to look at the note. He’s still bigger than me whether I’m growing or not, and he’s started wearing his hair short but neat, more like my father’s than his, long enough in the front to tuck behind his right ear. I have no idea how he put blue streaks in the fringe, though. We’re both growing up, I guess, but it must be easier to see on him, especially now that he’s not a page anymore, out even earlier than I was. “I’m not sure either,” he says, once he’s read the note. “He doesn’t call me Little Dragon.”

“He doesn’t call me that either.”

“Yeah, I know.” He grimaces, takes the sword up himself, tucks the sheath into his belt and whirls into a kata that I don’t do, trading the sword from hand to hand and ending in a clean downward cut that could split someone’s head from top to bottom. “Good sword.”

“It makes more sense for you,” I say.

“It’s your grandfather’s,” he says.

“Maybe my father is giving it to you.” The thought turns my stomach, but it makes even more sense than the rest--especially the part about calling him Little Dragon, which is much more fitting for the son of Date Masamune than, well, the wakashu.

And then I see the mannequin in the corner, where Lord Masamune’s armor is usually mounted beside the six swords, and I’m dead certain I was wrong about whose gift was whose.

Lord Masamune must have a better eye than he let on, because this armor isn’t as garish as I feared. It’s also not brand new, weathered from silver to gold at the edges of the linked leather plates. For a second I think it’s black, like the rest of the proper army’s, but when I look closer all the pieces, the cuirass and the upper-arm panels and the thigh-plates, are a very dark blue. At the edges, some of the lacquer has spilled onto the armor proper, but it doesn’t look like an accident. If Lord Musashi were still here he’d probably have something to say about the composition but I’ve got nothing.

The note is tied to the strings that bind the right shoulder to the cuirass. _Wear this until you grow out of it. I did. You’re too gorgeous to die. Remember that._

The first words out of my mouth are “Hidemune, I’m sorry.”

“For what?” he says, sour enough that he must have the same bile in his throat that I do. “That’s yours?”

I nod, since I can’t say anything, and turn the note, though I hope he doesn’t read it. It’s for nothing, though: he comes to the armor, reads the note over my shoulder. Well, that proves he’s still taller. He shrugs, though it’s less a shrug and more a shove, and sheathes the sword as he turns away and makes for the door.

Shit. “Hidemune--”

“It’s all right. Now we know what’s what.” But it’s not all right, between the lines or on them, and he slams the door open, then shut. “See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” I say, to no one at all now that he’s on the other side. “Tomorrow.”

***

Shikoku eventually, but Yonezawa first. My father is leading the larger part of the party--some forty of us, including Mitsukaga and Hidemune--to meet up with us at Miharu, and he and I are riding east first, alone. I guess if my father were to come with us we could stop at Shiroshi, but that’s unfair, and I can’t ask if it’s just Lord Masamune and me. Not even Toshichiyo is coming with us, even though he squired me into the armor this morning. Apparently Lord Masamune and I will be doing that for each other, not just me for him. It feels wrong. A lot of this feels wrong. 

“Someone’s got to watch the domain,” Lord Masamune says, when we break off from the main group. “And it’s the wife’s job if I’m not here, right?”

That does explain it, and as awkward I am about meeting Lady Megohime, it’s better done sooner than later. I’ve seen her before, years ago, but we’ve never really talked, and now that I’m sleeping with her husband it’s bound to be awkward. But there’s something else about this that isn’t quite right, and I bring it up. “Why isn’t Hidemune coming with us?”

“Why should he? He’s not her son,” Lord Masamune says, over the thud of our horses’ hooves. “I wasn’t married to anyone when he was born, let alone to her.”

Come to think of it, I’ve never thought there would be a difference. But then, my father only had one wife, and no concubines, and then just me. I’ve never really understood sibling politics, since the Sanada don’t really act like they have different mothers and I’m not that close to any other families. But I can imagine how awful it might be to be the eldest son and not the heir--and that, in retrospect, explains a lot.

“ **Keep up,** ” Lord Masamune says, and gallops ahead.

We race, and I can tell Negi loves every second of it. It’s a straight shot on a well-trod road, and either Lord Masamune is going easy on me or Negi is using the fact that she doesn’t have iron pipes on her sides to her advantage, because even if I don’t exactly keep up I don’t eat his dust. The new armor keeps me warm and doesn’t let the wind in, and soon we’re going so fast that I can’t think about anything but the pace and the bends in the road. It’s wonderful. It’s more what I was looking for yesterday than what I actually found.

By the time we arrive at Yonezawa, the horses are exhausted, and even Lord Masamune is leaning a little forward in the saddle. We pull ourselves together enough that when we go through the rice fields we don’t look like there’s a rush, but I still feel like my mind is flying along, somewhere ahead of us. And then the gates of the main house at Yonezawa near, and I snap right back to myself.

The Lady Megohime isn’t waiting with an entourage--she rides out to meet us, sitting full-saddle in hakama. She pulls her horse up alongside Lord Masamune’s, grins at him, says “It’s been far too long.” Lord Masamune doesn’t even have to dismount to kiss her hello, just lean out of the saddle. I think I want a wife like that someday.

It takes a little time for her to turn her horse around and get between us, but she does, and smiles at me too. It doesn’t feel in the least fake. “Shigenaga, right?”

I lower my head, since I can’t exactly bow on horseback. “Yes, your Ladyship. Please look kindly upon me.”

“Oh, you sweetheart. Aren’t you Kojuro’s son? You don’t have to be so polite with us. Call me Lady Megohime. Though I guess that sounds more polite than it is.” She laughs, lets go of the reins to elbow Lord Masamune in the side. “He’s a dear and so are you. Do you need to rest before you see Munesane?”

“Nah, gotta see how much he’s grown. For all I know he might be another pound heavier tomorrow.”

“The way he’s eating, he might be!”

“Got him on rice yet?”

“He’s trying. The teeth haven’t quite come in yet.”

We go through the main gate, and I’m struck by the sight of the river, how green the surrounding land seems without a garrison to fill it. For all that Lord Masamune talks about this peace, Sendai itself feels armed and ready, compared to Shiroshi and definitely compared to Yonezawa. 

“You taking him to meet his big brothers?” Lord Masamune asks.

“Of course,” she says. “I’m not leaving him here.”

Lord Masamune nods, and dismounts his horse once we’re in sight of the stables. He helps Lady Megohime off hers with a hand up, even if she doesn’t look like she needs it, and she kisses him again. I hadn’t thought she’d be that tall, but she can look him in the eye without turning up her chin.

“Go play with Munesane and review the new appointments. I’ll get tea set up.”

“Got it,” Lord Masamune says, and heads off into the house. “Stay with her, gorgeous,” he adds, and if I hadn’t already gotten my foot out of the stirrup I might have missed.

Lady Megohime laughs, probably at me, and calls over a groom for the horses and the luggage. “I’m afraid you might not have much to help with here.”

“So am I, your Ladyship,” I say, because it’s better than standing here like a red-faced idiot.

She looks at me with her eyebrows up, and corrects me again, “Lady Megohime is fine.”

I nod, and follow her into the main house, but don’t say it just yet.

***

“I’m no expert at tea ceremony,” she says, sometime later when I’m across from her at a small table, “but I do know what I like. Drink.”

“Thank you.” It’s good tea, just the right temperature, and I know you’re supposed to drink it slowly but it soothes my throat after the long ride. Maybe slower is better so I don’t have to talk, since I still have no clue what to say or where I stand. Well, sit. Here.

I knew it would be awkward. It’s even weirder because _she isn’t_.

“You know,” she says as she breathes on her tea, “you should talk, since nothing you say is going to shock me.”

I put the teacup down.

She laughs into hers, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Between the concubines, the mistresses, the friends, your father, and the ‘hot pieces of ass’, I’ve stopped worrying. To say nothing of that rival of his,” she adds, with a glance at the open wall and the garden outside, “may he rest in peace. As long as we all know who we are, and who we are to him, that leaves us to explore what we are to each other. And every one of us who’s sure of who he or she is is comfortable with everyone else.”

I know it’s meant to be reassuring, but my jaw tightens and I can’t help looking down. “I guess I’m not as sure of what I am as I should be.”

“Probably,” she laughs. “Though I can’t imagine he’s made it easy for you.”

I won’t say _no shit_ in front of his honored wife, but I’m sure she can hear it anyway. “Someone once called him ‘high-maintenance’.”

“Oh good, you’ve met Keiji!”

“He gave me a hair-spike.”

“Do you wear it?”

“Not often, but I’ve kept it.” I’ve found it goes well with my more formal kimono. I didn’t take it with me, since I’m sure I won’t need it in Shikoku if we’re going to fight.

“Your hair’s pretty enough on its own,” she says, and puts her teacup down, reaches across the table. “May I?”

I know I’m blushing, but I can’t exactly refuse her Ladyship’s request, so I nudge my cup aside, nod, and move to the corner of the able so she can reach.

She doesn’t pull it, just gathers the ponytail into her hand, looks at the end of the strands first. “Have you ever cut it?”

“No.”

“I envy you. It’s so strong! I have to trim mine if I want to keep it healthy.” She combs through some of the dust from the road--I think I shouldn’t have let her touch it, but then, she rode out to meet us and she asked and I should stop worrying--and then gives it a light tug. “Don’t do that tonsure thing that’s going around.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“Masamune tried holding a tonsure. It looked so ridiculous, he worse his helmet everywhere but bed for a year.”

Thankfully, I wasn’t drinking when the mental image hit.

She lets go of my hair, pours more tea into my cup, and smiles. “You’ve been at this for a year now. As I said, I don’t think he’s made it easy, but I don’t think you’ve made it easy for yourself either.”

“How?”

“Just from talking to you. You’re not comfortable in your own skin. Then again, you’re young, it’s natural to be afraid of what you’re becoming--”

“I’m not afraid.”

She sets the kettle down. “Yes, you are. You’d prefer to know things, and you don’t, and not knowing makes you feel you have to tiptoe around everyone else or else you’ll fall into a trap. If that’s not fear, I don’t know what is.”

“Your Ladyship, you’ve only just met me--”

“Lady Megohime, please. And yes. I have. It’s still written on your face.”

I fold my hands over the teacup, so I don’t do something worse with them. “I’m not afraid of myself.”

“Of course not. You aren’t yourself yet. _That’s_ what you’re afraid of.”

She reminds me of my father, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. 

Lord Masamune walks in without knocking, carrying a baby on his hip. “Kid’s got a bite.”

“That’s how we know he’s yours,” Lady Megohime says.

“What, like he could be someone else’s?” Lord Masamune sits down next to me, and the baby starts pulling at my hair and chewing on it. “Heh. Like I said, that’s definitely mine. Look at his grip!”

Lady Megohime catches my eye, raises her eyebrow. She won’t talk about it in front of Lord Masamune, I’m sure, but that eyebrow says _Remember what I said_ as clear as anything.

They’re hard words to forget.

***

Of course Lord Masamune and I don’t share a room in Yonezawa, which means the first I see of him the next morning is when we’re saddling up the horses and ready to go. Lady Megohime rides out with us as far as she can before she turns north, and the entourage follows her while we rejoin the main body at Miharu. From there, we ride southwest for two days, and then south to Kanazawa. I don’t dare ask Lord Masamune why we’re not just heading south through Edo, but I do ask my father, and all he says is that it’s Lord Masamune’s decision.

From Kanazawa, south along the coast, where every day it seems to get less and less like autumn, then inland again after almost a week. We reach Osaka on the evening of the ninth day, which means Lord Masamune has to wait until morning to pay his respects at the clan’s shrine on Koya. He hasn’t been exactly patient with me, well, ever, not that I mind, but that night he’s fierce and demanding enough that I have to bite down on a corner of the futon so that no one hears us and comes running. If it didn’t insult him to say so I’d think he was desperate. I can’t look my father in the eyes the next morning.

Lord Masamune takes Hidemune with him to pray at the shrine, but stays alone after for almost half an hour. We don’t miss the ship, of course, since it wouldn’t dare leave without the man who’s paying for the ride, but we do wind up being late enough that it takes us all night to get around Shikoku to Kochi, but we make the harbor at dawn.

And there are hundreds of armed pirates waiting for us on the shore.

Lord Masamune mounts his horse while we’re still on deck. **“Are you ready, guys?”**

No. No, we’re not.

But I draw my sword anyway.


	10. Chapter 10

We charge off the ship onto the shore, and Lord Masamune cuts down the first five people to reach him, sends them flying with a single swing. His horse mows over another three in his path and he breaks for the nearest command platform, tears a swathe through dozens of pirates, juggles them like hot rice on a skillet. And then he vaults off the horse and launches himself at the commander and I can’t tell how many swords he’s using at once until the end, when it’s all six and something explodes.

I don’t really get a choice about whether I fight off the rampaging pirates or not, because I don’t want to _die_ , but shit. I knew my first battle was going to be confusing. I just didn’t expect, well, this.

I have no idea where all these men came from, I’m pretty sure they’re not even fighting me right now, just flailing and trying to break away from the captured section of the camp, but I fight through them as best I can. I know I should try to hold kata and not just swing around my sword like an idiot but everything’s happening so fast and I know I can’t let any of them get to me. No wonder Lord Masamune had me fight Tadakatsu.

I really hope Tadakatsu doesn’t show up here.

“Shigenaga!” My father is just ahead of me on the beach, sheathing his sword after a flurry of attacks that leave the space around him clear. “Keep up with Lord Masamune. Don’t leave his side.”

“Yes, sir!” And no matter how much I want to ask what the hell is going on, I know now’s not the time, and all that matters is following orders.

Lord Masamune is already breaking into the fortress, and I have to run. Pirates converge on me, weapons out, and one of them swings his flail dangerously close to my head, but I see it coming in time and dodge under it. Hidemune’s just ahead too, with my grandfather’s sword in one hand, then the other, then both as he lops off someone’s helmet. I recognize that move from somewhere but now is not the time. At least six pirates come at me at once and I cut horizontally, see how many of them I can strike with one swing, Most of them, it turns out, but not all, and the one that gets in close gets a slash across the jaw for it. His blood’s on my sword. I can’t sheathe it. I shouldn’t anyway, I have to catch up, and Lord Masamune’s already at the next outpost.

I don’t know when the storm could possibly have started, but lightning crashes to the earth and fries the camp commander where he stands. And Lord Masamune’s swords are the conductor.

There’s no time to ask. I shouldn’t. I should just catch up as I was ordered and cut down the barrage of pirates storming my way.

Oh, and dodge the enormous steam-spitting boulders rolling out the fortress gates.

And the exploding tortoise shells.

And the needle-shooting floorboards.

And the parts of the floor that completely disappear as soon as someone falls onto them.

I catch up to Lord Masamune just as he crushes a switch captain and disables the needles in the wall. “Good to know Motochika still knows how to party,” he says. **“You having fun?”**

**“Fun?!”**

“Yeah,” he says, and slams the hilt of his sword into someone’s nose. “Fun! Nothing like a good fight to get your blood going.”

“They’re trying to kill us!”

“Nah, that’s just how Motochika says hello.”

“How can you tell?”

“You’ve never seen him pissed off. I have. Trust me, it’s different.” And he grins at me, says “ **Keep up!** ”, and breaks for the next command platform.

There’s nothing to do but follow him. I keep the pirates off his back as he tackles the commander, throws the switch on the floor-traps and springboards off the roof of the platform, clean over my head. I fight my way through to him, pick up where he leaves off on the fighters he throws my way. This is fun, he said. This isn’t war.

That should make it easier. I’m not sure it does.

We finally break into an open area of the fort, in the dark beneath the foundations. I barely make it through the door when torches explode along the walls, and a--well, I would say it’s a ship, but it’s in the basement, and it has pipes and steam and enormous metal teeth and lobster claws and tines of lightning where its antennae would be.

I wish I could say I’m kidding.

I can’t say anything, really.

I know what Lord Masamune’s order is going to be before he gives it, even if it makes no sense to try and attack that _thing_ with a sword. It’s like something out of an ink painting, except it’s blasting fire out of its claws and trying to choke me with its antennae.

By the time my sword even puts a dent in this thing--I swear, if it breaks, I’m demanding that Lord Masamune gets me a new one--Hidemune has caught up with us too, and is whaling on the right claw so I take the left. Lord Masamune has all six swords out and is moving so fast I can only see the dust in his wake, and stabs all six of them right up the machine’s main pipe.

“Get clear!” Hidemune yells, and I don’t have to be told twice before the thing breaks down.

The explosion is spectacular, flattens me to the wall. Hidemune lands across from me, but Lord Masamune appears completely unscathed and laughs as he charges forward past the gate that just opened.

“Aw, shit,” someone says behind me in the dark. “They broke it. Dad’s gonna be pissed.”

“Well, now we know what the weak points are,” another says. “We’ll just have to build a better one next time.”

I yell into the corridor, “Show yourselves!” and brace my sword in both hands.

They both laugh, over the distant echoes of the rest of this fight, and come forward into the remains of the blast and the ruins of the construct. They’re both about the same size, and look a little older than me and Hidemune but that might be because they’re just rougher overall. They both have light hair, bright clothes, and more jewelry than armor, though some of that jewelry looks more like tools than jewels. One carries a net and a trident, the other an array of pistols, and already one in each hand.

“So which one of you’s the dragon’s kid?” the one with the pistols asks.

Hidemune tosses his sword from his right hand to his left. “Which do you think?”

“Dunno,” the one with the trident says. “Pretty-boy over there’s not bad. You look like you’re more flash than moxie.”

“Say it to my face,” Hidemune laughs.

“You really wanna get me close enough to do that?”

“I’ll let you both get in.” He cocks his head toward me and says, ”Katakura, go back my old man up.”

“Hidemune--”

“Just do it,” he says. “That’s what Kojuro told you to do anyway. I’ll show these suckers whose son I am. You go show him whose you are.”

He’s right. It’s alarming to hear him say it, but he’s right, and I know what I should say, what he deserves to hear.

“I understand,” I say. “I’ll leave them to you.”

I’m out the gate Lord Masamune left by before the first shots are fired. He’ll be fine. If what Lord Masamune said is true, if this isn’t meant to destroy us, then even if they defeat him two to one this isn’t what I have to worry about.

Beyond the new gate, there’s a flight of wide stairs, spackled with sand and tracks. When I make it to the top, I’m facing the sea and the rising sun, and Lord Masamune and a man with an enormous anchor are silhouetted against it, both facing me on the eyepatch side of their faces. I’ve seen enough pictures and heard enough stories about Chosokabe Motochika to know it’s him, but he looks more like a pirate than a warrior and I didn’t expect that at all.

And then he lifts that enormous anchor and lobs it at Lord Masamune’s face.

There’s no way swords should be able to block it, even six of them, but that’s exactly what Lord Masamune does. They go at each other like they don’t even know I’m here, and now I see there’s no storm at all: Lord Masamune’s lightning is as real as Kikuhime’s fire, and Chosokabe’s anchor is aflame the same as her naginata was. I’m not just watching them fight, I’m watching the reason they fight, the power that’s waiting in them until they do.

For all the punches I’ve thrown and all the spars I’ve won, I’ve never fought. Not like this.

They clash together, scorch the shore, turn the sand into shrapnel and send it flying. I brace myself and keep my sword ready, stalk closer and wait for an opening. They might not leave me one but this is my post, this is what I’m supposed to see and do. I get it. I get why my father sent me ahead, why Hidemune has his duel and I have my duty.

Feet pound up the stairs behind me, and I spin to face them and shove whoever dares climb up back down. Pirates swarm the beach and I can’t let them interrupt Lord Masamune’s fight. That’s my job. I beat back anyone who comes within reach, hold the top of the stairs like it’s my home. There are dozens, one after another, but I knock them out until I feel like collapsing right on top of them, until I can’t take a step without something crunching underfoot. The armor Lord Masamune gave me is chipped and streaked with blood and sweat, and the grip of my sword is heavier, wetter than it should be, but I will not let go.

Finally, the onslaught is over, and Lord Masamune and Chosokabe are standing apart on the beach, weapons still readied but breathing hard enough to echo.

And then they both burst out laughing.

“Looks like you still got it,” Lord Masamune says.

Chosokabe’s laugh is rich and deep, even if he’s leaning on the anchor to catch his breath. “Could there be any doubt? It hasn’t been that long.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“I do. Then again, fighting off those Xavists is getting old.”

“Yeah, like you.”

“Hah! You’re starting to shrivel up, yourself.”

“Say that again and I’ll speed you along to hell.”

“Ha, fine, fine. How did you like the lobster?”

“Enh, not bad. Made me kinda hungry.”

“Come aboard the Fukaku, we’ve got a feast if you’ve got news. I’ll give the twins a couple minutes to finish up with your boy and we’ll get a good story out of it.” He thunks Lord Masamune on the back, and Lord Masamune does the same to him, which makes it difficult for him to shoulder his anchor again. And then he catches me staring, and laughs as broadly as before. “That’s the wakashu?”

“Yeah. Shigenaga, introduce yourself.”

I try not to step on any of the unconscious pirates and make my way over to bow. “Katakura Shigenaga. Please look kindly upon me, Lord Motochika.”

“Katakura, huh?” And then le laughs like it’s one of the wildest things he’s ever heard.

I’ve learned by now just how much of a bad idea it would be to punch a daimyo in the face, even one who just fought me and mine. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to do it.

“Ha, sorry, sorry,” he says, waving off my fists to show he saw them curl. “Just funny that he went with a Katakura. Fishing in small ponds, eh, Masamune?”

“Stop running off your mouth, Motochika.”

“Right, we should be feasting!” He throws an arm over my shoulder--the anchor narrowly misses the back of my knees--and ushers me and Lord Masamune toward the massive ship, which may not quite be a ship since most of it is drawn ashore and furthermore it has wheels. “Come on!”

I wonder if the rest of Japan is like this.

I wonder if Oshu looks like this to the rest of Japan.

***

No one waits on anyone on Fukaku. The feast on the deck is a chaos of dancing girls and drunk pirates and fireworks, and overlapping stories told loudly and with reenactments wherever possible. Lord Masamune fits right in, of course--and since I’m not attending him, I’m honestly at a loss for what to do.

So I wind up with Hidemune and the twins at the stem of the deck facing the sea, with a barrel of sake and an admittedly good spread of fried octopus. The twins, whose names turn out to be Kada and Toyo, are big drinkers and big talkers, and Toyo--she was the one with the trident--has been trying to get through recounting their fight with Hidemune for the last half hour. She and her brother keep stopping to argue over which one of their ideas it was to shoot up the remains of the giant lobster while Hidemune was about to jump off.

“Whichever,” Toyo says, waving her brother off. “The important thing is that we did it.”

“Have to admit, it worked,” Hidemune says. “Not that it stopped me.”

They laugh and toast, and I can’t help joining them. It’s not like I didn’t have a fight of my own, and they do say they want me to tell them about it, but it’s kind of hard to when they’re still going. I’m not sure I mind.

“We’re gonna have to rig up a whole new engine,” Kada says.

Toyo smacks him on the shoulder. “We knew that already.”

“Yeah but now we can’t just upgrade it.”

“So we’ll mug the Xavists for parts,” Toyo says. “Maybe the day after tomorrow. You boys wanna come?”

For a second, I don’t even think she means me. But I’m more concerned about “Us? On a raid?”

“Yeah, it’s more fun the more people come with you,” Kada says. “So long as you don’t make a war out of it, it’s pretty cool. We raid them, they call us stupid names, it’s all good. You in?”

Hidemune answers before I get to. “I don’t know how long we’re here. But I’d be up for it if we’re around.”

“Rock on! What about you, Shige?”

“I’ve never raided anything before,” I say, which is the most diplomatic answer I can come up with and I haven’t had enough to drink to start arguing with pirates.

They laugh. “What else haven’t you done before?” Kada asks, leaning forward over the bowl of fried octopus.

I’m not stupid. I know what he’s getting at. But again I don’t get the chance to say anything, because Hidemune gets there first. “You can’t flirt with him, Kada. He’s got an oath.”

“You’ve got a point,” Kada says. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t flirt.”

“And it doesn’t mean I can’t either,” Toyo says, and then completely opens her shirt. “How ‘bout it, Shige? Seen anything like this before?”

It takes a moment to register that a girl, well, a woman, just intentionally flashed me. They’re pretty nice breasts too, if a little larger than I expected, big enough that all the jewelry and feathers are clustered in the middle. And she has tattoos winding around the left one, black ink, not multicolored like my father has on his back. They’re--well. I’m definitely staring.

“Not bad,” Hidemune says, and how the hell does he make staring at a girl’s chest look less ridiculous than when I do it?

“Ha! I’ll show you _not bad_ later.” She waggles her shoulders. They, ah, bounce. “”Still haven’t answered my question, Shige. Got any schooling with these?”

“Not yours,” I say, which isn’t as stupid as a few other things I could have said, so I let it go.

“Want a closer look?”

Some sound comes out of my mouth, but it’s not a word.

“Lay off him,” Hidemune says, “he’s obviously not interested.”

“I’m not _not_ interested,” I say. Too quickly, though. And I’m not sure what else I have to say, so all that comes out is stuff like “It’s just--I’m sorry.”

They all laugh, except Kada, who leans forward and says, “I thought you said you were a wakashu.”

“I am.”

Hidemune grimaces. “You still haven’t gotten with any girls, Katakura?”

“You’ll hate me for putting it like this, but your father is a full-time job.”

Toyo and Kada burst out laughing, and Hidemune hides his face in his hands, groaning. “Low blow.”

“I’ll bet,” Kada says, which just makes Toyo laugh harder and Hidemune’s teeth flash.

“C’mon,” Toyo says, and drapes herself over Hidemune’s back, leans up to his ear. “Wanna get that picture out of your head?”

“Yeah,” he says, and that grimace is half-hidden under a smirk. “I’ll take you up on that, just give me a second.”

“Right behind you.”

He gets up, and she’s still wedged against his back. “Not for long.”

Kada waves them off, still laughing, and I manage a polite smile. I watch them go, and from where we are on the aft deck I can still see Hidemune looking for Lord Masamune in the crowd. He whispers in Lord Masamune’s ear, and Lord Masamune laughs and sends him off with a clap on the shoulder, and says something apparently funny to Chosokabe while Hidemune and Toyo disappear belowdecks.

Now that I know what I do about Hidemune, it makes more sense that things like this are easier for him. Compared to everything else that’s hard, it’s a small thing. I shouldn’t be jealous. But telling myself I shouldn’t be means I am, doesn’t it?

“Hey,” Kada says, “Dad’s busting out the rum we got from Kyushu. Want me to grab some for you too?”

“That’s the sweet alcohol?”

“Yeah, you like sweet?”

“I’ll try it.”

“Great, be right back--hey, One-Eyed Dragon, am I standing too close?”

“Nah,” Lord Masamune says, much nearer than he was a minute ago. “Just let me get a word in, got it?”

Kada grins, but doesn’t bow, and runs off to get the rum.

Lord Masamune, on the other hand, gets in pretty close and asks, in my ear, “Twigs, vases, or pears?”

“...What?”

He traces their shapes in the air with his hands. “Twigs,” straight down, “vases,” with a pronounced inward curve in the middle, “or _pears_?”, with a very pronounced outward curve at the bottom.

It looks ridiculous. How much has he had to drink? “Is this a test?” If Lord Musashi was supposed to teach me something important about art two weeks ago I must have missed it.

Lord Masamune laughs through his teeth. “What kind of women do you like, Shigenaga?”

_Oh._ The shapes in the air make much more sense now. Maybe I haven’t had as little to drink as I thought. “I haven’t really been with any.”

“Then what do you like to look at?”

It’s a direct question, I should answer, and it’s not as if I mind thinking about it, but there’s still something awkward about this. It’s like it used to be with the pages at the baths, or the senior retainers and their lewdness, except now it’s about me. And it’s hard to think about it generally when I’ve got someone’s clear, specific picture in my mind. “Um, long legs,” I start, “long neck too...Toyo’s breasts are too big,” which probably wasn’t what Lord Masamune wanted to hear and was rude of me to say but it’s true, they don’t stack up with what I’m seeing, “um, strong--”

Lord Masamune smirks. “All right, I’ve got an idea. C’mon.”

He leads me down onto the main deck, close to Chosokabe and his captains, which is also where most of the dancing girls and barrels of alcohol are. “Oi!” he yells, “Which one of you’s got the best legs?”

About a dozen women flash them right then, gather their skirts between them or hike them up or lie back and lift them clean off the floor. Some catcall louder than the pirates. One, um, smacks her own behind and winks at me.

All the blood in my body shoots up to my face. I can’t feel anything but livid heat.

Lord Masamune keeps laughing, slings an arm around my back. “My wakashu’s so good he only gets the best. **You see?** ”

It’s just like the last tournament. They’re all cheering. Except now it actually _is_ lewd.

“This man,” Chosokabe says, and points to show he means me, “knocked out forty-eight of you sons-of-bitches this morning, and it’s his first fight. That strong enough for any of you ladies? How about we show him how we treat the men who show us a good time?”

They call their daimyo _big bro_ , like everyone in Oshu calls Lord Masamune _boss_. And they do it like they like what he’s saying, like they agree with him--like they want me.

This had better not be a joke.

“I bet I can take him,” a woman says, and then another says something like it, and a third comes up behind me and hooks her fingers into my belt and says, “I want to see where you hide that strength.”

It’s probably the most embarrassing thing that’s happened to me all night, maybe all year, but the first words out of my mouth are “Lord Masamune--”

“C’mon,” he says, more permission than encouragement. “Show ‘em how you **party**.”

There’s one woman, not one of the ones who touched me, but who’s had her eyes on me since this started. She’s standing not far from Chosokabe’s circle, with a split skirt that shows off both legs at the sides, long arms with silver cuffs at the shoulder, a bright panel of cloth that only covers the front of her torso. Her hair is pulled back tight and it’s the same dark color as her eyes, and I like her smile, the way she shapes her mouth when she breathes out.

She catches me staring, lowers her eyes but looks up through the lashes. “I’m Ayumi,” she says. “Let’s go.”

It’s simple. It’s easy. There’s nothing I don’t get, or don’t think is right. I think I like that most of all, right now.

So I nod, and give her my hand, and for a couple of seconds I don’t hear the pirates and Lord Masamune cheering or laughing at all.

There are hundreds of berths on this ship, and Ayumi takes me to one of them, leads me in and shuts the door behind us. I can still hear the singing and storytelling on the deck above. Her back is turned, and I wonder if Kikuhime’s back is that smooth, if she has those two dimples over her hips. But it’s rude to think of one person when you’re with another, and I put that thought away as quickly as I can.

She lights a lantern, and I say, “Thank you.”

“Thank _you_ ,” she says. “I’m glad for the opportunity. You’re handsome.”

_Handsome,_ she says. Not _pretty_ or _gorgeous_ or _cute_. How different does one good fight make me?

“And what big bro and everyone did to you up there was kind of rude,” she goes on, with a glance back out the door, even though it’s closed. “So I understand if you just needed to get out and get some air.”

That’s kind of her, and genuine, and I know I like her. “No,” I say, “no, I want to do this. I just--um, they put me on the spot.”

She nods, smiles brightly, and sets the lantern down. Standing this close to me, she’s easily my height, lips on level with mine. “All right. I’ll try not to do that with you.”

I nod. Her pendant is right up against my collarbones, like I’m wearing it instead.

“You don’t mind that you’re not my first?”

“You don’t mind that you’re mine,” I say, “well, sort of.”

She laughs, and wraps her hands over my back, and draws me to her. “Well, then let’s start with the part that’s different, wakashu.”

It’s been so long since I’ve kissed anyone but Lord Masamune that I do it the way he likes right from the start. She likes it too, but not so hard, so I let up, take in the different taste of her mouth, the smoothness of her teeth, how slow her tongue is compared to his. It’s good. I like it her way, like finding out what she wants from her breath and the pulse of her hips and her nails, blunter than his, in the small of my back. 

There isn’t a futon in here. We do it on with her sitting on a cask, the ways you only can with a girl. She wraps her legs around me both times, first over my back to drive me deeper until I almost come, then around my neck after that when she shows me how to take her with my tongue. I know I shouldn’t come in her--I’m too young to be a father--but when she catches me taking care of myself while I lick her, she laughs and stops my arm, tells me what she’ll do so long as she knows I know how. _From experience,_ she says. I completely miss her meaning for a second. Then she sets a jar on the barrel and bends over it.

That’s different too, with a woman, even if the act’s the same. Even though I’ve been in Lord Masamune like that, I’ve never once felt like I was in control, responsible, setting the pace. I do now. I don’t for long, it’s too good, too tight and searing, and I almost forget to reach into her instead of curl my fist on something else. But I do, and she twines her fingers with mine, hers inside, mine out.

Her feet are off the floor when she comes. Her back shudders, and there’s nothing but me and a cask holding her up, and if I look half as beautiful as she does when this happens to me I can understand why Lord Masamune calls me gorgeous. I finish, folded over her, her thighs against my hips, still shivering until I’m done.

We kiss and laugh for a while, after I pull out, and I know she thanks me and I thank her but honestly my head is still reeling from the rest, so if she or I say anything beyond asking where the nearest towel is, I’ll never remember it. But everything we did, and her name, will stick with me no matter whoever else I do this with.

***

...If anything, I will remember this night because of how much of an idiot I must be to get lost on a moored ship.

I have every excuse. It’s late, it’s dark, I’ve never been here before, I don’t even know where I’m supposed to sleep. They probably expected me to stay with Ayumi, but there wasn’t a bed in there and I haven’t even found a spare hammock belowdecks, even with all the partying still going on outside. Ayumi went back. I could go back up there too, maybe, but from the sound of things I should probably wait until morning unless I want to describe my experience to everyone there, which I don’t.

There are plenty of rooms down here lit from the inside, but when I listen at the doors it’s clear I shouldn’t interrupt. I wind even further belowdecks, avoid the pirates carousing in the halls. It’s a little darker down here, but I’m more likely to trip over coiled rope than coiled people, and if I do decide to curl up and sleep somewhere in the halls, here is probably the safer place.

And there’s a room at the fore with light creeping under the door, and the sound of a blade slicing through air, over and over again.

Well, at least I know that there’s no one having sex in there. And I’ve slept while other people sparred and shadowboxed before, so I know I’ll be able to if whoever he is gives me permission. So I knock, and the swiping stops, but if there is someone in there he doesn’t say anything. Then it starts again.

He must not have heard me, so I open the door a crack, and open my mouth to say something, then promptly close the second but not the first.

This man moves so fast between strikes that he’s just a black and silver blur, and he’s never still for long. His sword moves even faster, slashing stars in the air even after he’s moved on to the next imaginary target. I know that if I was facing him I’d be dead on the spot, that even if I were fast enough to dodge him or strong enough to block I couldn’t bring myself to move. He stops and sheathes his sword with a clang, and turns to glare at me.

“Why are you here?”

“I was looking for somewhere to sleep,” I say.

“You’re on the wrong deck.”

“I know. But they’re all...” I don’t want to finish that, and the look on the man’s face tells me I have to choose my words carefully. He has light eyes almost like a cat’s, fully grey hair combed into his face as much as off it. I know he could kill me and I honestly think he might but I can’t move.

“Do what you want,” he scoffs. “Just stay out of my way.”

I nod, tell him “Yes, sir,” because anyone with a sword like that deserves my politeness, and come in and shut the door. It doesn’t look like a room that’s usually used for fighting, but it’s more spacious than anywhere else I have been on the ship--there is a table with open ledgers, a shelf full of scrolls and inkstones, a rolled up futon in the corner and a cushion to kneel on. I wouldn’t dream of taking his futon but that cushion looks tempting and if he’s shadowboxing he won’t need the table, so that’s where I sit. The ledgers turn out to be Kochi and Fukaku’s general accounts. He must be Chosokabe’s quartermaster or scrivener. I didn’t think pirates had scriveners. Then again, most of the things I thought about Chosokabe, about Shikoku, about everything really, have been turned upside down today, so fine, pirates have scriveners.

He looks at me, but it’s not the same glare as before, even if it’s still definitely a glare. I look down at my waist, since that’s where he weight of his gaze is. On my sword, it turns out. 

“Whose are you?” the scrivener asks.

“I serve Date Masamune.” If he wants me to be more specific than that, he can ask, and I’ll say so, but I don’t think that’s what he wants to know.

“Who?”

All right, then. “A guest of your lord.”

He nods. “Do you serve him well?”

“Is that a challenge, sir?”

That gets me the kind of glare from before. “You should know enough to answer that question without hiding it in useless sarcasm. Do you serve your lord well?”

I don’t know the answer to that as well as he wants me to. I can’t say _I do my best_ because I know I can do better. I can’t say _I serve him wholeheartedly_ because even after a year as his wakashu it’s not always true. I can’t say _he’s pleased with me_ because I never know. And _well enough_ and _he has no complaints_ sound rude and flippant, even in my head, and the scrivener has already gotten on my case for sarcasm that I’m not even sure was there.

“I want to,” I say, because that’s the truest I’ve got.

He nods. Apparently that answer was good enough. But then he assumes a stance, forward and low, sword just barely out of its sheath, and says, “Prove it.”

I’ve already seen the air and the shadows cut through things his sword has left behind. I know how fast he moves, how easily he could and probably would leave nothing of me behind but dust and hot blood.

“If you aren’t lying to me, you’re Motochika’s guest. I will not kill you. Show me how you serve your lord.”

It’s the least solicitous thing I have heard all day--if someone else had said those words, there would be a wink and a glint of teeth. But the scrivener honestly means _how do you serve him with your strength_ , and nothing else.

So I give him the benefit of the doubt, and ready myself across from him. My sword is drawn--his is not. I’ve never gone up against true iaijutsu before, and I can’t imagine anything else coming out of that stance, so I wait.

“I said I wouldn’t kill you,” the scrivener says. “If I attacked you, I would. Come at me!”

I nod, and do as he says.

I’ve learned not to hold back on people who can take it, and I treat him like one of them. He parries everything I’ve got, fast and hard enough that the air chafes my cheeks and knuckles. I go for every opening I can see, slice at his forearms and neck and chest since his head moves too fast to track. It’s even worse than against Tadakatsu; with Tadakatsu I could only defend, but here I know that my attacks do nothing, and waste even more breath, even more time. I’m wearing myself out and he hasn’t even touched me--

\--and then he does, flashes through my diagonal overhand and rams the hilt of his sword into my back.

It’s everything I can do not to fall over right there, and I don’t embarrass myself by dropping my sword. But I do reel into the bookshelf and have to let go with one hand to catch myself. That smarts, and it’s going to leave a mark, at least as hard as any I’ve gotten from Lord Masamune or my father.

“You think too much,” the scrivener says.

“I know.” And I hope I don’t sound too hateful around breath this short.

By the time I turn around, he’s facing me again, in posture so relaxed it has to be deadly. “You already know not to pull your strikes. Decide sooner, and you’ll connect.”

“Thank you, sir.” My father and Lord Masamune haven’t put it that way before, but then, it isn’t quite the same as _don’t think_. This man must think as fast as he moves.

And if you think everything through, you can only move as fast as you can think. That’s what they’ve been trying to tell me.

The scrivener goes on, “And your grip is too tight.”

“It’s a new sword.”

“That’s no excuse. Correct it now.”

I bring the sword forward and hold it how I normally would, then loosen my fingers a hair--just in time to block his sword, still sheathed, aimed at my head. The recoil is awful, but I don’t let go with either hand this time, and hold on enough to bring the sword around to counter from his other side. He dodges that too, of course, but still makes his point, and this time when he steps back I look him in the eye and nod, accept it.

We’re still standing like that when someone--my father, it turns out--opens the door without knocking. His hand goes to his sword instantly, but the scrivener puts his hand up to stop him. I don’t blame my father at all for his instincts, here. This can’t possibly look good.

Since the scrivener isn’t saying anything, I do, tell my father “It’s all right. I’m all right.”

He nods, and lets his sword click back into place, but I know how little that means with my father. “Lord Masamune is asking for you, Shigenaga. Do you remember where his room is?”

“No, that’s how I wound up here.”

“It’s beside the captain’s quarters on the deck above us. Go.”

“Yes, sir.” I bow to the scrivener, since he’s been teaching me, however weird that is, and then to my father on the way out. He snaps the door shut behind me before I can do it myself.

I know I shouldn’t listen at the door, especially not if Lord Masamune expects me. I want to. I don’t, and find the nearest ladder.

On the third rung, I realize I never got the scrivener’s name. It should be easy enough to ask after, even if I’ve figured him wrong: there can’t be many iaijutsu masters with silver hair.

On the fifth rung, I realize that I just got a swordplay lesson from Ishida Mitsunari.

On the sixth rung, I thank my ancestors that I’m still alive.

Ishida Mitsunari. I’d heard he was a prisoner in Shikoku, because even though Maeda Keiji diffused the battle of Sekigahara the shogun still took power in the end. I guess he’s a prisoner the way Kikuhime and all the Sanada kids are hostages. And he didn’t kill me where I stood.

Either way, I get to Lord Masamune’s room as quickly as I can. The feast is still going on, but winding down, smaller pockets of dancing here and there, carousing overhead and in the corners of the halls, drunk people staggering into the shadows. I only trip over two couples and one group of three on the way, and they take my apologies in stride.

I’m surprised to find Lord Masamune alone in the room. I expected him to have brought the party in with him, so to speak. But no, there he is, wringing out his knuckles. They’re bleeding.

“Ain’t a real **party** ‘til you punch the host,” he slurs.

I shut the door. “That’s not what you say in Sendai, your Lordship.”

He laughs, and staggers a little closer to me. The blood doesn’t drip off his hand, but he wrings it out like he knows it’s there. “Heh. You have a good time?”

“Yes, your Lordship.”

“Cut the lordshipping out and get over here.”

There are bandages in the trunk I packed for him, and I get them out. And there’s clean water in a barrel in the corner. Wrapping up his hand is no big deal; I’ve done it before, after training mostly, once after he scraped them on his horse’s tailpipes. Getting him to stand still is harder, honestly, and he bats at my hair with his free hand while I work.

“She like you?”

“Yes.”

“Taught you well, did I?” I tuck the bandage under, make sure everything’s tight, and he reaches up to take me by the chin. “Got nothing to complain about now?”

Not to complain about, and not that I want to go into right now, so I dodge it. “Is Lord Motochika okay?”

“Heh. He won’t bring that shit up again if that’s what you mean.”

“I mean, should I pack to leave quickly tomorrow?”

“Nah, only hard feelings he’s got are in his thick skull.” Lord Masamune laughs, more to himself than to me, and looks over his shoulder like he’s expecting a futon. I get around him and unroll it quickly, try not to exactly _help_ him to it (I’ve made that mistake before) but make it clear that that’s where he’s supposed to go. And he goes there on his own, only staggers once, catches himself before he whacks his knee against the trunk. I wait for him to be down and ready before I go unroll my own.

“Gorgeous.”

I stop taking my clothes off for bed. “Yes?”

“Anyone asks you anything about the Sanada kids tomorrow, you keep your trap shut. **You see?** ”

I glance down at his bandaged hand, remember that the Chosokabe are aligned with the shogunate, and put two and two together.


	11. Chapter 11

Lord Masamune sleeps in, I don’t. It would be a typical enough morning if we hadn’t spent it on a ship. He tells me to get breakfast and come back in an hour, maybe two, so I get up, get dressed, get my hair off my face, get out of the way as I should.

And it is pure inconvenience that I wind up in the hall just as Hidemune is coming down it.

He’s definitely had a good night, at least until he saw me. His hair is an even more deliberate mess than usual and he’s wringing out his shoulders under yesterday’s clothes. He looks me up and down like he can’t help it, then winces and glances back like he needs to see something else, right this second. Maybe it wasn’t as good a night as I thought, if there’s that much red in his eyes. “I hook you up with a girl and you still spend the night with him,” he says.

The hell? “What do you mean _you_ hooked me up with a girl?”

“You were hard up. I asked the old man to get you laid.”

“That doesn’t mean you did it,” I say, and I will not punch the daimyo’s son first thing in the morning, that’s just asking for trouble. “Even if it was your idea, it was still my choice. And it’s even more disgusting of you to claim credit than it is for me to go back to him after.”

He scoffs. There’s spit on his teeth. “Are you _trying_ to take him from me?”

“I went back because I was told to.” I glance at the door, wonder if I should bother keeping my voice down. “He got into a fight with Chosokabe and I bandaged his hand. That’s not something I took from you.”

“And what about everything else?”

“If you think everything else is something I took from you, that’s sick.”

“I don’t mean that! Everything else. He teaches you. He helps you. He gave you his armor--”

“He gave you my grandfather’s sword, that wasn’t even his to give.”

“--you get to fight beside him, and I’m stuck proving myself over and over where he can’t see--”

“Yeah, with my father.”

“Well if you’ve taken mine, then you don’t need yours!”

Hidemune doesn’t lose his cool. I haven’t seen that since that last tournament, the turn of his shinai in the dirt. But there’s no dirt here, and no weapons drawn, just raw hatred in his face and red at the corner of his eyes. He rakes a hand through his hair, shoves it behind his ear, and the blue streaks almost disappear into the black. But not losing your cool doesn’t mean you’re not burning up inside. I know that by now, and I know how it hurts.

So I hold onto mine. “You’re not going to provoke me, Hidemune.”

“No,” he says, almost laughing, “of course not. You’re a Katakura. Good Katakura only let it out when a Date tells them to. Guess I’m just not Date enough.”

“What do you want me to say to that?” I keep my hands down, out of his sight. “I’m not trying to take him from you. This wasn’t my idea in the first place--”

“But it was your choice.”

“--and if you’re doing something as petty and childish as using my father to get back at me, maybe you shouldn’t be Date.”

We’re armed. Neither of us is a page anymore. His hand is on the hilt of his sword, and I could get to mine before he draws if I need to. And I’m thinking about it like that, because the Hidemune across from me is someone who would challenge me for that, without a pitch or a referee. And I can’t take back what I said.

I won’t go for my sword unless he does. He’s thinking the exact same thing.

I don’t say I didn’t mean it. I don’t want to lie, and I don’t trust myself to speak. He doesn’t say anything either, and we retreat to opposite sides of the corridor, leave down different halls. If there are traps, neither of us trip them.

There are other places I can go for breakfast than the galley, I’m sure. Someone has to back down, and it might as well be me. It’s closer to my place than his.

***

Ishida Mitsunari doesn’t remember me. He also doesn’t eat. Both of these things turn out to be useful, looking for somewhere to be, if not alone, at least away.

I explain myself as briefly as I can, without naming names since he doesn’t seem to care. “Do what you want” is his maxim again, so I sit at the far end of the table and eat his rice and soup and salmon (with those exact same words for permission) while he works on the books. It’s surprisingly like watching my father in his garden--not as happy, but even more tranquil. The contrast strikes me most: after what I saw of Ishida last night, that frightening speed and violence, it’s equally frightening to see him calm. With my father, it’s more like you’re seeing him in his natural habitat when he works with a spade instead of a sword. With Ishida, I can’t help but think that if I were a spider and crawled into his ledger, I’d die with a brush stabbed clean through me as soon as I touched wet ink. It’s not unnatural, just full of potential energy, the difference between the sword belted at your side and the one held in your hands.

“General Mitsunari,” I say, since I don’t know how he’d prefer me to address him and I doubt he even has a preference, “do you serve Lord Motochika well?”

He doesn’t stop tabulating to look at me, but if he had feathers his hackles would be standing on end. “Yes.”

“How do you know?”

He doesn’t think about his answer at all. “I do all he asks.”

It’s the simplest answer. But it’s not enough. “Without question?”

“No. I have served no man without question since Lord Hideyoshi.”

“And he doesn’t mind?”

“He hasn’t said so.”

“Even if you’re his prisoner?”

He could kill me with that brush, the way he’s holding it. I let go of my chopsticks and lower my head.

“I owe Lord Motochika my life,” he says, and words like that shouldn’t be as venomous as these sound. “If that makes me his prisoner, so be it.”

That’s news to me, and even if he’ll berate me for my ignorance, I have to ask, “How did that happen?”

“We were betrayed by the same man,” he says. “Otani Yoshitsugu. To think,” he says more to the ledgers than to me but with the same cutting tone, “I had already been betrayed by Ieyasu, and didn’t think that another would sting as deeply. I entrusted Yoshitsugu with the righteousness of my war, and he repaid me with treachery.” His brush is dripping ink onto the page, and he doesn’t seem to notice, but I can’t speak up, not now. “If it had indeed been Ieyasu that slaughtered Motochika’s people in the name of this ridiculous peace, I would not have cared. But Yoshitsugu did it, under Ieyasu’s flag, and in the name of the Toyotomi. He had made me a traitor, when I hate traitors above everything else!”

He notices the spreading blot of ink, and tears the page out of the ledger to copy the whole thing over. “I gave my life to Motochika in penance for that, since Yoshitsugu had already died at Sekigahara. He does with it as he wishes. I know I serve him well because he does not permit me to die.”

Is what Lord Masamune says to me really the same as that?

I shouldn’t ask that of Ishida though, so I don’t. I pick up the bowl of soup, take a long drink and set it back down. Ishida isn’t really paying any mind to me, but still.

“Do you only serve him because of that debt?”

Well, now he’s paying attention to me. If I didn’t know better I’d think he just hissed at me like a snake. But it’s just breath through his teeth, harsh and fast, with words that sound the same. “I serve him because he is worthy of it. Do not mock me!”

“I’m not mocking you. Just...I know that I serve Lord Masamune because of who my father is to him, and what my family is to him. At least, that’s part of why. But it’s not entirely my choice.”

“That’s ridiculous! If you don’t wholly want to serve him and his beliefs, you aren’t serving him!”

“But I said--”

“Either you serve your lord, or you betray him! You cannot give him half of your heart! And you cannot serve only half of his!”

“But you said you still don’t serve Lord Motochika without question--”

“They are not the same thing! Lord Motochika requires my judgment, and he is worthy of my service. He is not Lord Hideyoshi, no man is and no man ever will be him again, but Lord Motochika has earned my respect, and yours! And I serve him with all that remains of my decrepit heart!”

How he can say all this and not completely slather the book in ink is beyond me.

“You cannot serve your lord dishonestly!” He slams the brush down on the inkstone, and it snaps at the neck. “You might as well name yourself his betrayer and join the rest of your kind in hell!”

Very slowly and carefully, I slide back from the table and leave anything breakable on it. This might be the wisest thing I’ve ever done in my life to this point. I don’t even apologize, since he never actually accused me of anything. Strangely enough, it works, and he replaces the brush, shreds some more ink, turns back to the book. The scowl on his face dissipates into a thin line, and then his eyes glaze over with concentration.

I wait a while longer while he recopies the page, then quietly thank him for the meal and excuse myself. I’m not sure he notices, to be honest, but I’m reverent all the same.

***

In the end, we spend almost two weeks on the Fukaku. Toyo and Kada take me and Hidemune on the raid of the Xavist stronghold across the strait--if I ever see another picture of that strange man with the hat, I can’t be held responsible for my actions--and the twins rig up a new engine for the newest incarnation of the lobster. We won’t be able to test it out until next time, they say, but there’d better be a next time, and I have to agree. Hidemune promises to write. The twins promise to send pictures.

I only run into Ishida Mitsunari one more time after that, when he barges in on an almost-formal meeting between Lord Masamune and Chosokabe. Again, Ishida doesn’t seem to remember me, or at least he doesn’t acknowledge me directly, which is probably for the best. The argument is just about finances, but my head hurts enough from the Xavists preaching that I just let it go.

On the last day, before the drinking and feasting starts in earnest (because there’s never not drinking on the Fukaku), Lord Masamune calls Hidemune in to the rooms while I’m packing. Hidemune ignores me except to nod, doesn’t bow to his father. They’re the same height now. I shouldn’t look.

“You called?”

It surprises me that all Lord Masamune starts with is, “You like it down here?”

Hidemune nods. “Yeah. The weather agrees with me.”

“Good. What about outside of Kochi? Taken any time to scope the layout?”

“Some. Why, are you planning to leave me here?”

“Yeah,” Lord Masamune says. “That’s exactly what I plan on doing.”

I know I shouldn’t look. But Hidemune’s face contorts, his mouth and eyes gape at the same time and his teeth flash white and he even puts his hand on his sword, which means I have to take note of mine, and--

“You said you scoped out the place,” Lord Masamune says. “About how much rice a year do you think it’ll produce?”

\--and then it all just falls away into disbelief. Hidemune stands there with his hands at his sides and his eyes hidden behind his hair. His lower lip shudders. I think I believe it before he does. No, I know I do.

Lord Masamune grins. “There’s a castle to the west, Uwajima. If you can hold it you can have it. It’s all taken care of except for your name. _Date Hidemune, Daimyo of Uwajima._ Think it’s got a ring to it?”

Hidemune gulps. Maybe even--no, definitely trembles. And once the trembling stops, the tears start, and he brings his hands up to hide his face. But the words break past his hands, “Thank you, Dad, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry for everything--“

“Don’t be sorry for being born,” Lord Masamune says. “You think I didn’t want you?”

Hidemune’s knees hit the floor, and he bows, thanking Lord Masamune until he runs out of breath. I stay where I am, as I should, but Lord Masamune comes down to him and takes him by the shoulder, hauls him up.

“Get used to not bowing,” he says. “You’re a lord in your own right starting tomorrow. **Got it?** ”

“Yeah-- _yes, sir,_ ” Hidemune corrects.

“No, _yeah_ ’s fine. Save the proper talk for the oaths.”

Hidemune nods, gets back to his feet, and wipes the tears off his face. His eyes still shine. They’ve never looked like Lord Masamune’s, but the brightness is the same right now, and with two to speak of instead of one I don’t need to look to hard to know he’ll hold his domain just fine.

I’m going to miss him. But everything else about this tangle makes sense now--if his father has to teach me how to serve, why shouldn’t someone who knows how to serve teach him to lead? I’ll apologize to him later, if I get the chance. Not here. But soon. And it’ll have to be soon, if we’re leaving tomorrow and he’s not.

***

I get the chance to tell my father I’m sorry first. He’s honestly surprised by it, enough to put down the map he’s consulting and look me in the eye. 

“For what?”

“I know about Hidemune.” I’m supposed to be hurrying back to Lord Masamune with some lists, but I stay in the door, leave it shut. “And I know why you didn’t tell me. There shouldn’t have been anything awkward, and I made it that way thinking about it.”

My father nods. “Hidemune did as well. But that, at least, was intentional on Lord Masamune’s part.”

“Because Hidemune needed to be pushed?”

“Because Lord Masamune thought Hidemune needed to push himself.” He smiles, briefly and without teeth, but I know what that means by now. “I don’t believe he knew how much it bothered you.”

“I never told him.”

“You could have.”

“It wasn’t my place.”

He shakes his head. “You’re learning. Perhaps this time, it didn’t, but someday something will. Until it affects how well you serve him, it’s not his concern, but once it does, he needs to know. Lord Masamune doesn’t always see what he needs to.”

_And that’s why he needs a right eye,_ he doesn’t have to say. 

“You could have told _me_ you were uncomfortable, Shigenaga.”

I smile, even though he isn’t anymore. “I didn’t know. But you never told me you were either.”

I’m not sure whether that’s a laugh or a cough. “It’s different.”

“Maybe. I still knew. But I’ve been guessing why instead of knowing why, and that’s not changing anything.”

“And what have you guessed?”

“I know you served Lord Masamune’s father the way I serve him,” I say, without lowering my eyes. “I thought it was weird at first too, and then it all made sense. And I’m going to have to serve his heir someday, the way you serve Lord Masamune. The way you always have. Or, um, the way you did until I started. And if I ever have a son--it’ll be the same. That’s what I guessed.” To be honest, it’s still weird, and the thought still makes the air tighten around me, but more with awkwardness than disgust. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“That’s part of it,” he says. “But at least you know what it means.”

“And you won’t tell me the rest?”

“It’s not something to tell, Shigenaga. It’s something you either feel, or don’t.”

I nod, but my face doesn’t come up. “I can’t be what you were to him. I probably won’t ever be what you were to him, to his son. But I’m something to him now, even if whatever it is isn’t enough--”

“Nothing is enough for him,” my father says.

“But he treasures what he has.” I look him in the eyes. “And I’m his.”

My father rolls up the map, and doesn’t quite smile, but the scar on his cheek spreads, distorts and lightens, and that can’t mean anything but satisfaction.

“So you don’t have to worry,” I say. “I won’t try to be something I’m not. I won’t be jealous anymore. There’s nothing to be jealous of. I am what I am and I serve who I serve, how I serve him. That’s all you wanted, isn’t it?”

“You have to want it too.”

“I do. I admit, I wasn’t always comfortable at first, but knowing what I know now I would serve Lord Masamune even if I wasn’t your son.”

“And what do you know, Shigenaga?”

“Not everything,” I say. “But enough. I know he’s not capricious. I know he’s committed to his people and that includes me. I know what he did for Hidemune, and what he did for the Sanada children, and what he’s doing for the shogun now, and I respect it. And him. I know what he’s giving up and putting aside in the name of peace.”

“Do you.”

“Well, I have some idea of it.”

Why isn’t my father smiling anymore? I’ve finally told him I all but love Lord Masamune and it’s not enough? Maybe my father is just as greedy as Lord Masamune under it all. “And that makes you respect him?”

“Why shouldn’t it?” Something’s not right. “I know how hard it is to have to let something go even if it’s everything you want. You do too, don’t you? If he’s doing something so difficult, why shouldn’t I respect him for it? After all you’ve done to make me revere him, are you honestly telling me now that I shouldn’t?”

“You might not be doing it for the right reasons, Shigenaga.”

Forget this. “Fine. He is my daimyo and I serve him as I am meant. What righter reason is there?”

I’ve dealt with my father’s tacit disappointment and disapproval for years. It never gets easier. I watch a wall of silence and stillness creep up his face, his hands and neck tense from the inside out, and no matter how many times I tell myself I can do better, it always comes back to this. I’m not him. And my lot in life, whatever else I do, is to be the next him.

“Go back to Lord Masamune,” he says. “He’s expecting you.”

“Father--”

“I said _go._ ”

And what else can I do but say “Yes, sir,” and run the way I always have?

***

The day we leave, Hidemune rides out with us to the shore. Mitsukaga is staying behind with him, and fifteen of the forty men who came here with us, but we stay together until the force splits. My father is one of the first to turn and board: I’m one of the last, since Lord Masamune is here until the end.

They don’t dismount, just like Lady Megohime didn’t: they clasp hands on horseback, turned in different directions, both toward home.

“Write,” Lord Masamune says.

“I will.”

“And start a family.” Lord Masamune grins. “Can’t hurt to have a few more Date in the world.”

Hidemune laughs, and doesn’t quite blush, but I know how proud and relieved he must be right now. “You’re too young to be a grandfather.”

“Heh, I always knew I loved you.” Lord Masamune reaches out, embraces him with their hands clasped between their chests. It’s awkward on the horses, but it’s the happiest I’ve ever seen Hidemune, even after his father lets go. And then Masamune kicks his horse into gear and rides onto the ship, so I turn and do the same.

“Shige,” Hidemune says, once my back is turned.

“Yeah?”

“We’re cool.”

“We are,” I say. And that’s all that needs to be said.

He doesn’t stay on the shore to wave us off, and by the time I’ve stabled Negi belowdecks, we’re far enough into the strait that I can’t see land at all.

Lord Masamune’s stabled his horse next to mine, and is waiting for me when we’re out. “Make sure to feed her now,” he says. “I’ve got something for you to do once we get to Osaka.”

“Yes, your Lordship?”

He reaches into his armor, hands me a scroll. “Guess who’s the fastest around here, except for me.”

I look back at Negi. I’m going to owe her a lot of radishes, aren’t I. “Do you need me to ride ahead?”

“No, behind. The rest of us are making a straight shot to Edo, but you’re gonna ride to Kyoto first. You’ll know who that scroll goes to. You do this right, you’ll catch up with us again before you see Mount Fuji. **Got it?** ”

“Yes, your Lordship.” He’s right about the distance, and I do trust myself to do it on my own and catch up. And I’m honored that he thinks of me as fast enough now--which means I’m faster than my father. I don’t want to think about that. “Are you sure you can’t tell me who it’s for?”

“Like I said, you’ll know.”

It’s a test. There’s nothing to it but to accept that and move on. “All right. I’ll get some rest, and head out once we make port. Is there anything you need before I go?”

“Nah. I’ll have Toshichiyo stock you up.” He threads his hand through my ponytail, kisses me the way that usually means something more is coming, but leaves. “Let’s see how you keep up.”

I do go rest, but I feed Negi the radish I promised first. She’s being tested just as much as I am, after all.

***

If I pace it right, it’s only a day’s ride to Kyoto, and I set off north as soon as the ship touches down. Negi’s glad to be free and so am I, and we take it at a gallop right from the start just to take the edge off. We can walk later if she needs to, and if I need to loosen my armor, but for now all I hear is _guess who’s the fastest around here_ , in time with the beat of Negi’s hooves. The scroll rests snugly in my armor, presses against my chest when I breathe. We take to the plains, and Negi’s enjoying this as much as I am even if there’s no one to race.

There’s a glimmer of gold ahead in the brush, but we’re going too fast to do more than dodge it. I remember Kikuhime’s fire, the resolve in her eyes. She probably hates me. I wonder if anyone else has challenged her since we left. But I drive the thought out, hold onto the reins, and stay out of the way of the--

\--of the chain-spear that just slammed into my chest. And no, I don’t.

I fly clean out of the saddle. Negi whines, but I hear it in a distant echo on the way down. I’m definitely still conscious when I hit the earth, enough to roll onto my side and not die and go for my sword, and then that same weapon whacks me across the shoulders and flips me over. It hurts like hell, but I can’t let it stop me, and not even the boot rammed onto my chest is going to keep me down.

The flaming spear pointed at my throat might, though.

The man holding it can’t be that much older than I am, and I think he might be shorter but that might be the wind knocked out of me, and strong, and densely built. His hair is striped gold and black and pulled tightly back, except for a ragged fringe and a braid in front of his left ear with a feather and a single coin knotted at the bottom.

“So the Dragon of Oshu’s sent you to check up on us, huh?” He turns his face aside and spits on the ground. “Serves me right for thinking he still had honor.”

I don’t care who he is: when he gets his foot off my chest, this man is dead.


	12. Chapter 12

Fire crackles mere inches from my skin, and the man with the braid holds his spear steady. I don’t let go of my sword, glare as hard as I can while still catching my breath. My chest is burning for lack of air. I won’t let it stop me.

“Lord Masamune’s honor is none of your business, asshole!”

The man with the braid hisses through his teeth, shoves the spear closer to me. Flames lick at my throat. I won’t flinch. I _don’t_ flinch. “So you do serve him.”

“You knocked me off my horse without knowing who I serve?” He really _is_ an asshole.

“You’re wearing Date armor and flying the colors,” he snarls. “Either you are what it says you are, and I unhorsed you for it, or you mugged it off a Date soldier, and I unhorsed you for it.”

“Make up your mind.” I already have. The instant the pressure lets up on my chest I am going to get out of this and then we can have a fair fight or none at all. “Then again, you’d know a thief and a mugger when you saw one, even at that speed, wouldn’t you?”

“You dare call me a thief!”

“You didn’t respond to _asshole_.”

It’s a really good thing he has to pull back the spear before he stabs it down--that gives me time to do exactly like I want to and _kick him in the balls._

I can’t take time to revel in the look on his face since I have to get out of the way of his spear, but I’m sure I’ll see even better when I beat his face into the ground. I get to my feet just in time to dodge his blade, swinging through the air on a length of chain as long as my arm. I can’t parry that. I know in two seconds that that’s impossible, and that’s just time enough for me to dodge again.

_As hard as you can, as soon as you can, as much as you can._ He’s got more reach than I do but that doesn’t mean I can’t take him down once I get past it, so that’s what I do, duck under his next swing and shoulder in. There’s no room to slash so I ram him with the hilt. There my be rends in his armor but he still soaks the strike, kicks me in the chest and springs off into a wall of flame that keeps me from getting anywhere near him. I should be terrified but I’m too pissed off to do anything but swing my sword through the fire and round it, track him on the other side. He’s fast. I’m faster. We race to the end of the smoking wall and he yells before he strikes, flails the spearhead and the chain at me from above. Never mind how much it’s going to hurt, I’ll beat the shit out of him, and I slice into a tear in his armor, make it spring up red. The spearhead slams into my thigh, but not enough to down me, down is intentional, I meant to take him with me and get the spear out of his hands and break him. He doesn’t break. No matter how hard I punch, he doesn’t break, fights back and rolls me over headbutts me. That fucking hurts. I wring his neck. I have no idea where my sword went or why there’s so much fire around him but I hate him and he has to die--

A dozen shuriken hiss through the air and thud in the earth around us, like a trick knife-throw. He stops, and once I’ve given him a black eye I do too.

“Doubtless that is the wisest course of action, master,” a kunoichi says. “He cannot possibly be the messenger we were expecting.”

“Shut up, Setsuna.” But he does untangle himself from me, even if he aims another elbow at my head on the way up. I hit back.

“As my master commands,” the kunoichi says, in the same deadpan tone as before. “Certainly I will say nothing about our last correspondence with Date from Shikoku and how he intended to send a messenger to further clarify his position around this time, coming from that direction, traveling openly with no deception or intent to deceive. But no, I am silent.”

I find my sword in the grass, flick his blood off it. “He said I would know you when I see you.”

“My master has instructed me to remain silent,” she says, with a slight bow. Her hair is shaved at both sides, but long in the middle, and I have to wonder where everyone is getting the hair dye around here because that shade of red isn’t natural or ninja-like. “But Yukimasa is more likely to be the intended recipient than I.”

Yukimasa.

_Yukimasa._

I smack myself in the forehead, and not just because of the bruise his headbutt left. “You’re Sanada Yukimasa.”

He gestures at the coin dangling off the end of his braid, glaring at me like I should know.

“I couldn’t exactly see that when you were knocking me off my horse.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have been going so fast.”

“His Lordship said you would be in Kyoto.”

“The emperor wouldn’t see me,” he says. There’s still a cut on his arm, but he doesn’t seem to notice, not with how he flails his hands when he talks.

“I wonder why,” I say, almost as flippantly as the kunoichi--Setsuna, I think he said her name was.

Yukimasa glares, and goes for his spear again, so I make sure he knows I’ve got my sword, and Setsuna sighs loudly, crosses her arms. “Please, master, do kill the messenger. That will make our next course of action much easier to determine.”

Yukimasa groans, and puts up his spear. “Fine, Setsuna, you win.”

“My master is wise and gracious.”

He grits his teeth, and holds his hand out to me. “Give me the message.”

That’s a whole lot of command, coming from someone I just gave a black eye and a decent cut to. But I reach into my armor for the scroll and hold it out to him anyway. “If you want me to bring back your reply, you’d better not have hurt my horse.”

He scoffs. But he turns to his kunoichi, and says, “Setsuna--”

“I understand and obey,” she says, bows, and disappears in a whorl of shadow.

I have to blink a few times to assure myself of what I’ve just seen, even if I thought nothing would faze me after the mechanical lobster. By the time I reorient myself, Yukimasa is sitting in the grass with the scroll. He reads slowly, but without squinting, and that lets me get a good look at his face and his reactions. They’re trending angry. I’m not surprised.

“All this tells me is that he installed his son at Uwajima,” he snaps up at me. “How long is he going to ignore me?”

“He’s not ignoring you,” I say.

“Then what is he doing?”

“Do I look like him?”

“I don’t know, do you?” He shoves the scroll aside in the grass without rolling it back up. “It’s not like I’ve seen him for six years.”

The welt he left on my forehead swells, catches up with me. He hasn’t seen his family either. Now that he’s not trying to kill me, I look him over, search for similarities to Kikuhime and Yukinobu and the others. There are some, but Yukimasa’s darker, harder-skinned. He’s not that tall, definitely shorter than I am, but we must weigh about the same since he’s so densely muscled. He also shows it off much more than I would, but then if he’s been living in Kyushu he doesn’t have to worry about the seasons as much as I do. He’s wild--no, feral makes more sense.

I lower my eyes, try not to seethe or mock him. “Your family is well.”

He looks up at me like I just stepped on his tail. “What do you know about my family?”

“I just said, they’re well. I’m close with Kikuhime, and--”

“Keep your hands off Kikuhime!”

Damn, he doesn’t have to bristle every time I say anything. “I haven’t touched her!” Never mind that now I’m thinking about it, which is just plain awkward, and her brother just knocked me off my horse and is sitting about three feet from me. Even if I did manage to win, he’d kill me for it. “No one has. No one _can_. Do you know about her pact?”

“Pact?”

“They’ve all resolved that they won’t marry anyone unless the man can beat them in single combat.”

“And no one’s won?”

“No, though the Tokugawa are definitely trying.” I wince, and he sees it, and his fist tenses in the grass. “She’s defeated all of them, and no one’s tried twice.”

“I’ll have the shogun’s heart for this!”

“Not if she gets it first.”

“She’s about the only person I’d cede the honor to.” He hisses through his teeth, finally takes notice of the cut on his arm and tears some cloth off his hemline to staunch it. I’d ask how he can be so careless with his clothes, but they’re already tattered in places, hanging on pins in others, and the effect seems to be deliberate. “So you say you’re close to her.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I said.”

“And who the hell are you that you’ve got the right?”

“I’m Katakura Kojuro’s son.”

You know, from the look on his face that just made this even worse. He holds the end of his improvised bandage in his teeth, and they might as well be canines because he looks like he could bite my throat open given half the chance. “And how do you like having all my father’s loyal vassals now?”

“Better us than the shogun taking their heads.”

“Then you’d better give them back once I kill the shogun.”

“Don’t you think it should be their choice who they serve?”

He tears the bandage with his teeth. “If they don’t want to serve the Sanada now, they never really did.”

“What about the ones whose sons have succeeded them already? What about the ones who have family up north and like the stability?” Not to mention what if my father contests his right to reclaim them, not that I think he’ll do it but I almost want to throw that logic in Yukimasa’s face just to see how he deals with it.

And he deals with it by huffing through his teeth and pulling the bandage tighter. “Just like a Date to take something and pretend it’s always been his.”

“You’re doing the same thing.”

“They were ours! Kai is ours by right!”

“Only if you can take it back. If you can’t hold it, you can’t have it.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?!”

“Someone you need to get what you want. If you were strong enough to take Kai back, you wouldn’t have to beg Lord Masamune for help!”

He throws the scroll into the grass and takes up his spear again. I’m ready for that asshole to come at me again and this time I’ll cut him open so he can see how weak he is--

“Master,” Setsuna says, sitting on Negi’s back only three feet to my left and Yukimasa’s right, “I have brought his horse as instructed. Certainly it would be wiser to take his horse and his message and kill him right here than it would be to show him some diplomacy and hospitality, such as we possess. It would surely show the Date clan and the other allies we seek how seriously we take this campaign. They would flock to our side after that.”

Yukimasa growls and throws his spear down into the earth, point first. “Fine! Stay and have a meal and take our reply to your master.” And he stalks off toward the woods as if I don’t need to follow.

Setsuna leads Negi over and hands me her reins. “My master--”

“Is an asshole,” I say.

“...so it would seem,” she says. “Nevertheless, I would not support him if I did not believe his path to be righteous.”

I can’t help but say, “I know the feeling.”

***

In spite of Yukimasa being Yukimasa, he’s gathered a band of about three hundred soldiers, and claims there’s another five thousand waiting back in Kyushu, not counting about ten thousand Shimazu, Kuroda Kanbe’s miners, the remnants of the Mori faction, and about four thousand angry Xavists. They’ve set up camp in the woods outside Kyoto like outlaws, except well-organized and very well-trained, especially in passive defense. The trap system is so elaborate that Chosokabe would get jealous, and Setsuna has to pry me back from trip wires three times on the way in. It’s even harder for Negi, and I threaten Yukimasa that if he does something to my horse I will tell Lord Masamune to join with the shogun and crush him, because we can. He of course responds to the threat with more threats, and Setsuna has to break us up _again_.

Once we get to the camp, he goes off alone to write the message, and I take some food and a look around. Three hundred is a lot to travel with and looks like more, especially compared to the forty we rode down here with, but they’re moving slower and staying longer so I guess it makes sense. But it looks as much like a small village as a traveling camp, with temporary stables, shanties bound together with trees for corners, and the men aren’t as soldierly, as grounded in bushido as we are in Sendai. I can imagine every single one of these men fighting to the death on Yukimasa’s order--as easily as I can imagine them setting fire to any town they come across on the way. 

“I am sure my master would appreciate your effort in gathering intelligence,” Setsuna says. She definitely wasn’t beside me two seconds ago. Well, she is now.

“I’m not spying.”

“But you don’t deny gathering intelligence.”

“These past weeks are my first time out of Oshu,” I say. I don’t find any shame in it. “I’ve never met anyone like you.”

“That troubles me to hear,” Setsuna says. Another curl of shadow and she’s on a branch overhead, her hair dangling straight down like a pennant. “I have never met Yukimasa’s siblings, but to hear they aren’t like him is disturbing.”

“They aren’t. And they aren’t like these men. Not that they’re not strong,” I say quickly, even though she might already know what I mean, “and not that they don’t want to take the shogun down. But I can’t picture them here. And Yukimasa isn’t like them either.”

“Not civilized?”

“Not...not a samurai,” I say. “He doesn’t fight like one.”

“You must tell me which school of bushido endorses kicking your opponent in the groin.”

I cough. “You have a point.”

Another shadow whips about her, and she’s standing behind me. I spin to face her and she’s already rolling her eyes. “My master has sat simmering in his rage for six years. That it has not completely eroded his core of honor is testimony to his strength.”

“Because he uses it to supplement his strength?”

“No. Perhaps if he did, he would be stronger than you.”

I take the compliment in the spirit it’s given, but when I lower my eyes to thank her, she disappears again, and then her voice comes down from the treetops again.

“Instead, he uses it to offset his fear. I don’t imagine it’s all that different than your bravado.”

“Come down here and say that.”

“You only threaten me because you know I will not follow through,” she says. “Surely you know better than to make such offers in the face of actual reprisal.”

I do. And that’s exactly what she’s talking about, isn’t it.

Somehow, her hand clasps my shoulder. I turn to face her, and sure enough, she’s there, shuriken in hand. She raises her eyebrow, tosses her hair over her shoulder, fans the shuriken out. She holds them as lethally as Lord Masamune holds his swords. I know what she wants me to see.

Low-lying branches rustle, and Yukimasa comes through the brush. It only takes one look at us for him to throw his scroll down and break the spear out. He doesn’t even ask if I’ve hurt her or what I’ve done before he charges me.

I barely get my sword out in time. We bind, and flames rise around him, and I realize my mistake a second too late. The chain of his blade winds around my sword, and he pulls, and I don’t let go.

It snaps.

This isn’t the same feeling as being disarmed. The recoil is completely different, an explosion of wind that my arm can’t quite take. It throws me back and down, surges up my entire arm and twists me backward. The hilt is useless and the blade flies through the fire and into the woods. 

Setsuna whirls about and grabs the haft of Yukimasa’s spear, wrenches it backward and away from my face. Shadow douses the fire and blasts into Yukimasa’s eyes, shoves him out of reach, and then a tendril winds around his ankles, hangs him upside-down and thrashing.

“Master,” Setsuna says, “your instincts, as ever, are swift and uncompromising. One might go so far as to praise you for acting without thinking at all.”

The broken blade stands upright like funeral incense or a grave marker.

***

The trouble of traveling with a party of three hundred is how little can be spared. Night falls, and no one can give his arms to replace mine. _Who would arm a stranger,_ some of them say. I don’t blame them. And frankly, I don’t deserve it, since I started it, so I stop looking.

The men build cook-fires, gather around them, tell me how Honshu is treating them so far, how much they want to march on Edo before winter comes. Yukimasa still hasn’t given me his reply--he can hang from that tree until his leg pops out for all I care--and at this point once he does I am breaking out of here, rested or not rested, and Yukimasa can go fuck himself. Maybe with his leg. It would probably fit.

No one brings me any message. Even if these men don’t have a sword to spare, they do have a place for me to sleep, and I take it. No wonder Lord Masamune needed the fastest rider. He must have known there would be delays like this. That’s probably why he didn’t tell me.

I go to bed hating Yukimasa, and wake up dreaming of Kikuhime. I’m fairly sure I dreamed of fighting her instead of him, like that, with walls of fire and her fists pummeling my chest, her legs around my waist, but that doesn’t explain the erection. Or maybe it does. Either way, it’s uncomfortable, and I won’t get myself off on someone else’s futon. But I can’t leave the camp without tripping those traps, so I’m stuck. I just wait for things to go down, get dressed and get out.

And the first thing I see when I get out of the shanty is Setsuna, scroll in one hand, Negi’s reins in the other.

“My master is not fluent with apologies,” she says.

“Somehow I suspected that,” I say.

“Nevertheless, he tries.” She hands me the scroll, which I tuck away, and then she indicates just how many parcels are threaded through Negi’s saddlebags. I came with four bags of provisions--there are eight now, of unfamiliar work. “We can’t spare even a broken sword, but we do know how long it is to Edo.”

“Don’t lie, Setsuna.” Yukimasa shoves one of his followers aside and comes to me scowling. “We do have a sword to spare.”

He hands me a wakizashi in a red and gold sheath, polished and worked and treasured, then crosses his arms when he’s free of it.

“Don’t get any ideas. It’s not for you. You said you’re close to my sister. Give this to her from me, since I don’t know how long it’s going to be before we make it up there. And if you need to defend yourself with it on the road, I can’t stop you.”

I understand and take it the way he means me to. “Let’s hope I don’t have to.”

“If you lead anyone back to this camp, I’ll burn you alive.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

“You dare--”

“I won’t,” I say, firmly.

He holds the other end of the sword, doesn’t let go but doesn’t pull it toward himself.

“She uses a naginata, not a sword,” I tell him. “She’ll probably give this to Yukinobu. Is that all right?”

“As long as she sees it first,” he says, and lets go.

Setsuna doesn’t smile, but I can tell all the same that she approves.

***

I know I won’t stay on the Tokaido the whole way, but the first day out, I make it as far as Nagoya before Negi starts to hate me for it. I guess if I were changing horses I could get to Edo in three more days, but it’s unfair to her, even after the long rest we had last night. Lord Masamune doesn’t want me to take three days, though, he wants me to catch up with him and they’ve only got a day’s head start. That means five, not three, so I don’t worry yet.

I can’t make it to Shizuoka on the second day, Negi’s too tired, so we blast between Okazaki and Anjo toward the coast, and sleep in view of Mikawa bay. I know we’re on the shogun’s old land now so no one will trouble us, and dawn comes earlier here so we set out with the sun, rejoin the road, and ride to Kakegawa by dusk. This is the longest I’ve ever ridden out alone since running away from home when I was nine. It’s much easier now than it was then. I ask around on the road, and though Lord Masamune didn’t pass through the town a few farmers heard them in the hills yesterday. If I do this right, and don’t stop at any inns, I can make it to them the day after tomorrow.

I definitely have to stable Negi and get some rest myself by Ejiri, but there’s word of Lord Masamune’s party passing through mere hours ago. I’ll get them in the morning, maybe the afternoon, I think, and leave the main road.

But it rains the next morning, and I lose their trail a league past Shizuoka. I’m fairly sure the mountain I sleep in the shade of is Fuji herself, but either way it doesn’t bring good dreams like it’s supposed to--more of Kikuhime and her fire, which definitely keeps me warm when I’m asleep but puts me in a cold sweat after. My thighs are too sore from riding for me to do anything about it, and besides, I have to keep going. I can’t put wanting her from my mind as soundly as I want to.

It’s the fifth day now, and at the end of it Negi and I are in Odawara. No one’s heard from Lord Masamune, and these postmasters go everywhere, so I can’t help worrying. But I send word ahead to Edo, bathe, buy enormous radishes for Negi, and rest as well as I can. If nothing goes wrong, I’ll be in Edo tomorrow afternoon.

And nothing goes wrong.

***

Edo makes Sendai look like a piddling fishing village. Osaka was bigger, and Kyoto was brighter in the distance, but Edo has almost all of both and rises out of the gates and rice fields like castles on castles on castles. The guards expect me and let me through, escort me and Negi through the streets toward the Tokugawa palace, and it takes us until sunset to get there at a trot. Negi’s not used to cobblestones, even ones as smooth as these, but she keeps steady and so do I.

The palace itself is about twice as big as Sendai’s, but it’s almost all new or under construction. The guards and I have to duck low-flying beams four times on the way. But the main house is older, even if it’s polished to a blazing shine, with golden hollyhock leaves on the door.

“Lord Date Masamune will be saying in these rooms,” the guard explains when we get to a guest house adjacent to the main. “We’ve been informed of his delay. The shogun has insisted that you use them on your own for the time being and will provide a squire to attend you. Is that suitable, Lord Shigenaga?”

With Toshichiyo and the pages miles away, I’d almost forgotten that some people call me that. I hope I don’t delay answering too long. “Yes. Thank you.”

“Unless you bear a message of some urgency, the shogun will see you formally in the morning, when you have had some time to rest and acquaint yourself with the premises. We will also have supper sent up at your convenience.”

I nod. “Thank you. I don’t think I should offend the shogun with my appearance like this.”

“We’ll take your armor and clothes to be cleaned at once.”

They do, which leaves me pretty much no choice but to ask where the men’s bathhouse is, and once that’s settled I’m on my way. There aren’t may people there at this hour--the last shift of palace guards is leaving as I enter, and I’m able to wash up completely alone. The baths are indoors here, opulent instead of open, with painted and jeweled screens, but that still gives me plenty to look at while I soak. I even let my hair down and borrow some of the public oil, since no one will be bothered if I untangle it alone.

After a few minutes, someone else joins me here: first, two guards at the door, and then a man about Lord Masamune’s age, already mostly naked, with a towel around his neck. He gives me an apologetic smile as he makes for the washing buckets. “Sorry to disturb you.”

“You haven’t, sir,” I say, and go back to wrestling with my hair. It’s amazing how many knots it can accumulate in a week of riding, and I haven’t run any oil through it since Shikoku. I’ll ask the squire about getting something stronger later.

The man nods to me, and smiles brightly, then goes about washing up. My guess is that he came from the dojo or some other training since his hands are both wrapped but the bindings are white. He reminds me of someone, maybe Yoshinao, though that’s mostly his build, and I could imagine him as a teacher or master-at-arms. He’s beefy and broad: there’s definitely muscle under his skin but it’s all rounded and healthy. Also, those wraps on his knuckles aren’t as clean as I thought they were. He doesn’t seem to notice.

“You’re bleeding, sir.”

He looks at his hands and laughs. “My apologies. I’ll be sure to clean it off before I join you. I must have been more thorough with that punching bag than I realized!”

I nod, and he does exactly as he says he would, and by the time I’m done piecing through my hair he’s already lowered himself into the bath across from me with a deep sigh.

“I must say,” he says, “I’m not as spry as I used to be.”

He says it with such good humor that I have to smile back, even though I’m not sure what to say or whether I owe him a compliment for it.

“Did you just arrive in Edo?” he asks.

“Yes, about two hours ago. I rode from Osaka.”

“How was the road?”

“Easy enough to travel,” I say, “though I didn’t stay on it the whole way. I was trying to catch up to his Lordship’s party but I lost them past Shizuoka.”

He laughs. “It’s not like Masamune to stick to the main road no matter how well you pave it.”

I know exactly what he means, and his laughter is contagious. And he knows Lord Masamune, so I know I have to be respectful. Lots of daimyo come to Edo every other year, it’s the custom. He must be one of those, or maybe just a friend of his from the palace.

But before I can ask who, he asks me, “How long did it take you?”

“Six and a half days.”

“On the same horse?”

“Yes.”

“You’re an excellent rider.”

“I have a good horse.”

“If you’re with Masamune’s party I imagine you must! But that doesn’t discredit you as a rider. I’m sure you’ve taken good care of your horse.”

I nod. “Thank you, sir.”

“And you had no trouble on the way, like your daimyo’s party has?”

I know I shouldn’t tell him about Yukimasa, since that message has to go to Lord Masamune first. The scroll is safe in my rooms, not with my clothes, and if anyone’s dishonorable enough to read it that’s not my fault. But I’m immediately aware that I shouldn’t bring him up at all, or the other Sanada, if I can help it. Not in the palace. “Do you know what trouble Lord Masamune got into?”

“Bandits in Shinano,” he says. “As far as I know, they’ve been dealt with, and they’re coming here on the Koshukaido now, according to the post they’ve sent ahead. You must be anxious.”

I nod. He’s not wrong.

“You’re quite young, aren’t you?”

“I’ll be eighteen this coming year.”

“Is this the longest you’ve been out on your own?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the longest you’ve been without Masamune since you started serving him?”

I nod again, wind my hair back since it’s starting to drift over to his side of the baths. He must know who I am, but it’s hard for me to get his name since we’ve already been talking. “But I should probably get used to it. I’m not going to serve him like this forever, right?”

“I suppose not,” he says, and leans back, spreads his arms. “But the bond between you should never weaken.”

“At this point, I don’t think it can.”

He tilts back his head, and his laughter thickens his throat. “Then don’t let it be severed.”

“I’d never,” I find myself saying. “A year ago I might have questioned all this, but Lord Masamune is my daimyo, and my teacher, and someone I’d respect and honor even if it weren’t for that. If something ever comes between us, it’d have to be something that’s wrong with the world itself.”

For the first time since we started talking, the man across from me smiles with his mouth but not his eyes.

We sit in silence for a while, and the water loses some of its heat. I’ve probably been in too long, but at least now I can’t feel how sore my thighs are, and I stand up to stretch and take my leave.

“You’re leaving?” the man asks.

“Yes, thank you,” I say. “They should be done cleaning my clothes by now.”

“Oh, please don’t worry about that, I’ll have some sent to your rooms. You’re about the same size as some of my sons--though Yorinobu’s clothes are a little too loud for you, I think. And you’re taller, but in hakama I’m sure no one will be able to tell.”

His son, Yorinobu.

The _shogun’s_ son, Yorinobu.

I’ve been bathing with the shogun.

I can’t get on my knees and bow in the bath.

I still try.

“Please, there’s no need!” he laughs, waves his knuckles at the surface of the water. “Save it for the formal audience, it’s fine. Just enjoy your stay.”

“Yes, my lord.” I try not to blush, but I guess even if I do I can blame it on the heat of the water. And I get out of the baths without slipping, and dry off and get out. I do bow at the door, though, even if he doesn’t want me to kneel.

Honda Tadakatsu is standing in the hallway.

He grinds his gears, almost as if to say hello.


	13. Chapter 13

The formal audience is one of the most awkward things I’ve ever been through, and I’ve done some amazingly awkward things in the last year. The shogun receives me after a short queue of the other people he has to address this morning: the ceremony looks more or less the same as Lord Masamune’s court, except everything is bigger, brighter, a little higher-stakes. I wear my own armor and my own clothes, which were delivered to me clean at the crack of dawn, and kneel to him as I should, tell him I precede my master and appreciate his sufferance.

He laughs. I know he’s not malicious, but his amusement isn’t as infectious as it was yesterday, when I didn’t know whom I was talking to.

After that, there honestly isn’t much to do. He introduces me to his sons and grandsons, some of whom I already know--two of them have fought for Kikuhime--and his nephews, and all nineteen of his court ladies. _Nineteen_. I’m not going to be able to keep their names straight. The queue behind me grows longer and longer, and so does the list of important people with connections to the shogun whose faces I should keep track of. I honestly don’t understand why it’s so important for me, if Lord Masamune already knows most of these people.

It hits me between the names of his fifteenth and sixteenth honored concubines: this isn’t because I’m Lord Masamune’s wakashu. This is because I am Katakura Kagetsuna’s son, and it is my first time at court.

It doesn’t change how I’m standing here, or how I speak to people. But if all of this has been about that--if this audience is something that I have to do because I’ll be a castle lord someday, not because I’m a wakashu now--I can worry less. I’ll be coming back. I’ll see these people again, learn their names (they’ll keep changing anyway), have more to say next time. So for now I’m gracious and polite, just meeting a daimyo’s family, not proving myself to it. They already know what I am. That makes it easier.

And once that’s done, the shogun asks after my father’s health.

He could have done it yesterday, when we were alone. He’d probably have shown more genuine concern then. Not that there isn’t concern: there’s just something off about it, about him, when he’s surrounded by hundreds of courtiers, when everyone is harping on his question as much as they’ll harp on my answer. A question about my father’s health yesterday would have been just that. It’s something else today, and I’m not quite sure what.

So I tell him, and everyone else at court, “Well enough to ride with his Lordship.”

There’s a murmur in the court that isn’t exactly laughter, and then one of the bakufu lords asks me, “And just how far did he ride, young man?”

And that rubs me the wrong way even more than the shogun’s attitude. “Ten days from Tamura to Osaka,” I answer, and I can’t help being a little defensive.

“I thought he returned Tamura to our predecessors.”

“He did,” the shogun says, at the same time I do, but I go on, “That doesn’t mean we can’t start a journey from there. It’s still part of Oshu.”

“Yes, your daimyo’s holdings are vast, for what little they give back to us,” another bakufu official says. The shogun waves him off again, but the words still hang in the air.

“It’s not my place to speak of that, sir,” I say. “Perhaps you can address it with his Lordship when he arrives.”

“Spoken like a true Katakura,” the official who asked how far he rode says, and I know disdain when I hear it. “The power rests with you only when you wield it, and not when it comes time to reap its consequences.”

“I didn’t come to Edo to be insulted, sir.”

The official laughs into his sleeve. “Your father is a model of selfless virtue, young man. I insult no one to say so.”

“Then you had best check your tone,” the shogun says, also laughing, but louder, brighter. I can’t tell if it’s forced or not. “Then again, it’s true. Masamune’s Kojuro is an admirable man, and has large shoes to fill.”

At this point I don’t care whether they mean to insult me or not--they’re talking about my father like I’ve already succeeded him. That’s not fair. “I don’t intend to fill them just yet, my lord,” I say.

“Nor do any of us, Shigenaga,” the shogun says, and for all the certainty in his tone I know it’s not completely true. He can’t speak for his councilmen, not the way they’re smirking. “Please forgive these men their presumption.”

I have to do it. Too many people are watching me, and I can’t just stand here and say nothing, or worse, insult them. Then again, Lord Masamune might call me a coward for forgiving them--they implied that my father is a cheat, that they want him gone, and Lord Masamune would never let that stand and neither should I.

But not if it means war. Right?

The shogun is surrounded by hundreds of powerful people, and he wants me to forgive them for insulting my father. I don’t.

“They can ask for forgiveness, my lord,” I tell the shogun. “They’re the ones who insulted him, not you.”

This time, the murmur that boils out of the crowd has no laughter in it at all. The shogun looks over both shoulders, one after the other, and the courtiers whisper and snarl. For just one second, I see the same kind of humor I saw in the shogun yesterday at the baths, and he shakes his head like he’s trying to dry it off his face. “You have a point,” he says. “If my associates want to apologize, they may do so on their own. But I do so on their behalf nevertheless.”

“Same old Ieyasu,” Lord Masamune says from the back of the chamber.

I turn and bow to him, but everyone else just stares, and the shogun rises from his chair. “I see you didn’t feel like waiting in line, Masamune,” he says, but with that same edge of amusement and happiness from last night.

Masamune approaches the dais, with my father over his right shoulder as always. He grins at me, and then my father nods, almost smiles, and comes to stand at my side instead. While Lord Masamune goes on with the formal part of the audience--which doesn’t sound all that formal, coming from him, even if the words are the same--my father puts his hand on my shoulder and says, privately, “You did well.”

“To get here early?”

“To say what you said.”

I nod, and stand as close to my father’s side as I can.

***

I squire Lord Masamune out of his armor a few hours later. Toshichiyo helps--Lord Masamune insists he needs to learn and I should teach him--and as soon as we’re done Lord Masamune sends him off to meet my temporary squire and learn his way around.

“Got something for me?” he asks, as soon as Toshichiyo’s gone.

I reach into my kimono for the scroll, hand it to him. He also notices the wakizashi on my hip, so I take that off too and set it aside, but he doesn’t remark on it, just starts to read. “So, Sanada Yukimasa.”

I say nothing, Just the mental image of him is making me sick to my stomach.

“You like him?”

“He’s an asshole,” I say.

Oddly enough, that makes Lord Masamune grin and brighten. “You _hate_ him?”

“Like I said, he’s an asshole.” There’s got to be something to do other than stand here and wait, so I go over to his mounted armor, straighten it out.

“Yeah, but how do you hate him?” Even though my back is turned, I can hear him smirking. “Does he get your blood going?”

“What?”

“How do you feel when you fight him? Want to go at it for hours?”

“No, I want to end it quickly with his face in the earth so he shuts the hell up.”

Lord Masamune tsks, and the scroll crinkles shut. “Such a Katakura.”

“What does that have to do with hating him, your Lordship?”

“Never mind.” I keep fiddling with the armor, but he comes closer, hakama rustling on the floorboards. “Just looking out for what’s mine.”

“We fought,” I admit. “The first time, we were interrupted. The second time, he started it dishonorably and he broke my sword.”

“Can he dish it out?”

I nod.

“But you can take it.”

“Of course.”

Then he turns me to face him and shoves me against the wall and says, “Did you miss me?”

I did, but I don’t have to say it, just show him, grab him by the lapels of his kimono and push back--or pull myself in, the gesture is the same. He kisses me like it’s not a reward but a promise, bites my lip and holds my shoulders to the wall, laughs into my mouth. Somewhere I must have done something right, must have said and done a lot of things right. He goes for my throat, holds me by the hair, unknots my hakama and yanks my underclothes down.

He missed me too.

“Yeah, been too long without a **party** for you, gorgeous, that it?”

I grab for his clothes but he gets on his knees, scrapes his teeth down my chest. Fire bursts through all of yesterday’s soreness and I rock into his hand, then his smile when he brings me closer, into his mouth. He’s as good at this as I want to be, as I try to be, so tight and hot that I can’t keep track of what I should do or learn. He laughs. I feel it under my skin, faster than my blood.

“C’mon,” he says when he pulls back to just tongue and teeth, when he folds one hand to hold me where he wants me and slides the other back, around, between my ass and the wall. “That all you got? Give me the rest, show me how big and hard you’ve gotten without me--yeah, c’mon, gorgeous, fuck me with that pretty cock--”

I can’t think, do what he says without a thought to how hard or how fast or how angry I am--angry, yes, but he wants me riled up, wants me to hold him by the hair and fuck his mouth until it’s me setting the pace, not him. And I can. I want to. I do.

The wall slicks up behind me, and I stagger, hold onto his hair with both hands. The strap of his eyepatch loosens, comes undone around my thumb. I don’t care, keep going, thrust into him until I feel teeth as often as tongue. I don’t know if he gags or laughs, probably laughs, but it’s so good that I don’t care and when he sucks me down tighter than I can handle I don’t warn him first, just come.

He pulls away, lets me loose, and I don’t slip down the wall but only because I will myself to stand. My cock is so flushed that it shines. His is hard enough that I can see the outline through the folds of his clothes, and I don’t ask him what he wants me to do with it.

When I stretch out next to him on the futon to get his clothes undone, our shoulders and hips align, but my legs are longer by an inch. I don’t bring it up.

***

When my father tells me that we are to dine with the shogun tonight, I expect a grand affair and a feast. Well, the feast part is true, and the food is amazing--I didn’t know you could fry shrimp and still have them taste light--but it’s just the four of us around a table, Honda Tadakatsu looming in the corner, and the servants making themselves scarce except to bring more food and more sake. The shogun doesn’t drink, and my father doesn’t drink much, so most of the sake is for Lord Masamune and he’s taking advantage of the shogun’s generous hospitality. It leaves the shogun plenty of time to talk.

“And how is Motochika?”

“Building lobsters,” Lord Masamune says. “Not that he’s got anyone to test them on.”

“Except the Xavists,” I say, aloud, thanks to my share of the sake. “And us.”

The shogun laughs. “I should pay him a visit myself! Tadakatsu, how long has it been since we were last in Shikoku?”

Tadakatsu makes a whirring sound and flashes his eye.

“Ah, yes,” the shogun says. “Too long. And how is--”

“He’s well,” my father says. “Shigenaga spoke with him twice.”

“Did you! That’s excellent.” This is the shogun from yesterday in the baths, not the one from this morning at the audience. “Did he give you a lesson in swordplay?”

It’s strange to hear the shogun so excited about his adversary--but then, they were friends once, and I remember what Lord Masamune said, _Ieyasu’s got a thing for bonds_ , that he doesn’t let go even when he should. “He did,” I say. “I’m not sure I’m cut out for iaijutsu, but he made a lot of good points.”

“No, you’re built much more like your father,” the shogun says. “I suspect Mitsunari is far too thin for his height, even now, but he’s always used it to his advantage.”

“And some people take the opposite path,” Lord Masamune says, and elbows the shogun in the side.

They laugh together, and the shogun goes on, “I assure you I’ve lost none of my strength, Masamune. Would you care to test that tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I’ll bite. You up for it, Kojuro?”

My father nods, and eyes Tadakatsu in the corner. Tadakatsu blinks the red light in his eye. That might be a challenge accepted.

“What about you, Shigenaga?” the shogun asks. “If you’ve faced Mitsunari, have you tapped into your warrior’s spirit yet?”

“My warrior’s spirit?”

“If you have to ask, you haven’t done it,” Lord Masamune says. “Shit, I was hoping Hidemune’d get it out of you. Or Yuki--“

My father coughs loudly.

“-- _mmnnobu_ , whatever is name is, you’re close with him, right?”

That’s a cue to change the subject. I take it, since my father already cut him off and I’m more part of the conversation anyway. “Yeah. It’s hard to keep everyone’s names straight, though. They keep changing. Not that I’m immune from that.”

The shogun turns to me. “How so?”

“I used to be Shigetsuna, with the same _tsuna_ as my father. Then you named your grandson and I couldn’t use that kanji anymore.”

For a moment, I swear Tadakatsu is glaring at me, and I hold tighter to my chopsticks.

Then the shogun laughs, as heartily as before. “Forgive me, please! You must have been so young. It was unfair of me to ask your father to do that. You can go back to your old name if you like.”

I shake my head no and set my chopsticks down. “Thanks, but it’s all right. I’ve gotten used to my name. The _naga_ is from my grandfather, and I don’t mind being compared with him. And I think it suits me better.”

Lord Masamune laughs and says something in his other language, probably about just why _naga_ suits me; the shogun smiles and nods approvingly; my father smiles into his cup, and warmth assures my shoulders. Something’s definitely going right. I shouldn’t bring up that _warrior’s spirit_ they mentioned, in case Lord Masamune slips again, but I can keep the conversation here or get the shogun talking and maybe no one will even remember what almost happened.

“That reminds me, my lord--how do you keep the names of all your children straight?”

“Not to mention all the wives,” Lord Masamune says, leaning lewdly over the plate of shrimp. “How’re you holding up under that? Or should I say _over_ that?”

The shogun’s laughter is more nervous, almost self-deprecating. I’d even say sheepish if it weren’t for the light in his eyes. “Aha, well. I cherish the bonds I have with each and every one of them, but it--well, I remember once when I was a child, I was staying at some lord’s castle--it must have been Nobunaga, I was his hostage for a time--”

“His and everyone else’s,” Lord Masamune says.

“--true. Anyway, I was staying at his home, and someone had given him this enormous Western cake as a gift. It must have been nearly as big as I was. Nobunaga didn’t care for sweets, and Ranmaru insisted he was too grown up for it, so somehow it fell to me. Tadakatsu insisted that I should eat it piece by piece and even if I never finished it it would still be good for a week, but I couldn’t bear the thought of it going to waste and I ate it all. Not all at once--over about a day or two, and nothing else.” He winces, but his smile brightens and his eyebrows raise. “Having nineteen wives is much like that, except it’s not my belly that hurts.”

I hope it’s not indecent to laugh as hard as I am. But he’s been laughing all evening, and most of yesterday, and Lord Masamune finds it hilarious, and I think my father just shot sake out his nose and is trying to cover it up.

“I know! I should have listened to Tadakatsu,” the shogun says, laughing with us. “I have ever since.”

“I didn’t think he had much advice to offer about dessert and wives,” I say.

The shogun blinks at me. “Tadakatsu has many wives! Though no children, save by adoption.”

...I wonder if it’s possible to hide my entire face behind one piece of tenpura. Maybe if it’s a large one.

***

“Interesting,” my father says, when I finally sit down with him and tell him about Yukimasa. We’ve been in Edo three days and I’ve only just now gotten the chance--it’s not like I can bring him up anywhere that the shogun or his people can hear, and I get the feeling they have ears everywhere. It means waiting until we go for a ride outside the city, far enough that we can see all the rooftops glowing in the sunset. I think I’m ready to go home. “How many people did they say he had?”

“About twenty thousand from Kyushu,” I answer. “Even if they can get past Shikoku, it won’t be enough. They really do need us.”

He nods, brings his horse to a walk, and Negi and I follow suit. “They’ve made no secret of that.”

“The emperor turned them down.”

“Not only the emperor,” my father says. “You have a right to know--Yukimasa has been asking mercenary factions as well as warlords. They’ve also turned him down.”

“If it’s because he treated them like he treated me, I completely understand.”

My father lowers the reins into his lap, doesn’t look at me. “It might be.”

“Lord Masamune wouldn’t be in correspondence with him if he wasn’t at least thinking about it,” I say, then ask. “Would he?”

“Lord Masamune has to look out for the Sanada children,” my father says. “That doesn’t necessarily mean supporting Yukimasa’s ideals.”

“True.”

“But yes,” my father says, “he has to think about it. Whatever choice he makes _will_ determine the course of this country. Even if in the end he decides not to decide, that’s still a decision.”

“It doesn’t sound like Lord Masamune, not to decide.”

My father doesn’t smile, but at least he nods, and spurs his horse back toward the city. I follow.

“When he was your age, Lord Masamune used to charge into everything in life without thinking,” he says. “He’s grown, since then: at first, I could usually stop him when it would be dangerous to proceed, and after that he learned to find his own reasons to plan and delay. Responsibility has been good for that.”

“Good for that,” I ask, “but not for him?”

It’s difficult to keep pace with his horse, especially since I feel like this conversation is still half secrets. “This is the sort of situation he would have just charged in on long ago.”

“Because he’d know what he wants?”

“He knows what he wants now,” my father says. “That doesn’t mean he’s going for it.”

***

The night before we leave Edo is brilliant and cold. Lord Masamune is asleep, stone drunk, and I regret not being the same because at least I would be able to stay under. But no, not even the lethargy in my body is helping me to sleep, and as long as my mind’s awake the rest of me night as well be.

I leave Lord Masamune in the room, nod at the guards, and wander the halls of this section of the palace. No one bars my way outside: this building is in a fairly central courtyard, with only small bare trees to block the sky. I wouldn’t think as many stars would show here as show at Shiroshi or Sendai, but tonight the sky is almost as bright as daytime, with a low full moon and a thousand stars, packed too densely together to find the constellations. I keep walking, in a direction that turns out to be toward the shogun’s residence, the outer part of the inner chambers--I know it’s there because the guards glare at me and try to turn me around, thinking I want a look at the women.

“No,” the shogun says, on the porch behind them. “I’ll walk with him.”

They bow, and so do I but not fully.

Of course he doesn’t take me inside, and there is a guard detail following us, but the building’s wide porch leads to a balcony overlooking the northern slope of the city. The stars are a little less bright, but the moon is low and enormous, and the shogun sighs to look at it, leans on the rail. He doesn’t seem to feel the cold.

“I’ve always had trouble sleeping before long journeys myself,” he admits, smiling at me over his shoulder. “Eventually I started to take sleepless nights as a sign that I was going to be kidnapped in the morning.”

I laugh, more because I’m supposed to than because of his good humor. “What’s keeping you awake tonight, my lord?”

“Not every journey takes place on foot,” he says. “I know now when the shape of the country is about to change.”

I look down, away from the stars. “My lord--”

“Please, I don’t mean to put you on the spot. I don’t mind,” he says, and I would believe him wholeheartedly if it weren’t for the sadness in his eyes. “I know Masamune faces a difficult decision, and so do you.”

I nod. “My lord, who am I talking to now--the shogun, or his Lordship’s friend?”

He laughs. “You have a point. But I can ask you the same question, can’t I? Am I talking to Lord Masamune’s wakashu, or Katakura Shigenaga, a young samurai from Oshu?”

I shake my head, no. “I feel like they’re the same person.”

He nods, and braces his hands on the porch rail. His knuckles are still wrapped, and the wraps are clean enough to shine blue in the starlight. 

“That sounds like such a luxury,” the shogun says. “The older I grow, the more decisions I make that feel like someone else’s choice.”

I remember his advisors surrounding him on the grand dais like well-dressed vultures.

“But all these choices must be made to preserve the bonds of peace and friendship,” he says. “And to make them and then regret them is to undermine their worth, to me and to the future. After Keiji bested me at Sekigahara, I worked toward unification again, because everyone scattered, Western and Eastern armies alike. But I knew what I wanted, and what I fought for, and especially after Mitsunari abandoned his quest for vengeance, I thought the stage was set for peace without force. It took years, but the daimyo put their trust in me again. And I could not make them think that their trust had been misplaced.”

“And that makes it feel like someone else’s choice?”

“No--peace will always be, must always be, my highest priority. But the choices I must make to preserve it,” he starts, but doesn’t finish, and stares out over the land.

Maybe it is better that I ask him, instead of Lord Masamune or my father. I might not get the whole answer, or even an entirely honest one, but if I stack it up against everything else I know I might find something approaching the truth. “Is that what happened with Sanada Yukimura?”

He nods, as much at the stars as at me. “I always respected him deeply. I had hoped that, if I left him until last, he would understand my drive for unification and peace. And he did want peace--but not unification.” The shogun laughs, low and trapped in his throat. “It is the spirit of the tiger--well, no, his spirit is his own. Once he discovered that power, and that desire in himself, he could not let go of it. And he championed the people of Kai and their independence until the end. But I couldn’t have it. As a man who respected him, I would have loved nothing more than to talk, and wait, and hope he would see it my way in time. But as the shogun, I couldn’t allow it.”

“So you forced Lord Masamune to kill him.”

“No, never! Masamune insisted that he be the one to do it. He said I didn’t have the right. I...yielded him that honor.”

Lord Masamune told me, almost a year ago, that he was _the only one who could_ kill Sanada Yukimura. That the shogun wasn’t strong enough, that no one else in the world could match him. But it wasn’t only a matter of strength. It was a matter of respect. Lord Masamune killed Yukimura for Yukimura’s sake, not the shogun’s: he killed him to preserve their rivalry, not end it. 

“Masamune didn’t speak to me after Osaka for three years,” the shogun says, leaning over the rail so that his face is in shadow, “unless I summoned him to court. I’m glad that our bonds of friendship are still strong--both as the shogun, and as myself. And I cannot regret the decision I made, because look at what it has wrought--peace and safety, a country under one banner but without tyranny, where our strength exists in concert, not conflict.”

“And where Lord Masamune has nothing to be but restless,” I say. It’s true. It explains everything--how listless and disdainful he is, how he’s always out for a fight even with the people closest to him--how he laughed at Shikoku like he hadn’t had fun in years but it still wasn’t enough--how he chased after bandits to delay talks of peace--how he pushes me, how he wants me to fight back--how on the day he met me he wished that his domain were under attack, even if it meant harm to my home.

The shogun sighs and turns to me, pushes off the rail and crosses his arms as if to ward off the cold. “He made the best choice he could. Sometimes every possible choice comes with a sacrifice.”

“But that sacrifice shouldn’t be a part of himself!”

“That’s what sacrifice is,” the shogun says. “It’s giving part of yourself away.”

“But it isn’t regret.” Ishida Mitsunari’s words about service echo in my head. “If you give yourself wholly, you shouldn’t regret anything. You only regret when you doubt yourself. You made Lord Masamune doubt himself.”

“That was never my intention.”

“Like it wasn’t your intention to kill Yukimura in the first place?” I don’t care whether it’s my place or not, I can’t stop the words from coming. “Like it wasn’t your intention to break up his family and humiliate his daughters?”

“Humiliate them?”

“You keep sending your sons and your retainers to fight Kikuhime, when all she wants is to rebuild her clan, not join with yours--”

“I was sending her my sons to apologize! To make up for what I’ve done, as an overture of peace, and to forge a new bond--”

“She hates you,” I say, “they all hate you, and they don’t understand what you’ve done.”

“Then you must tell them--”

“I will, but they won’t believe you. And they might like it even less. Kikuhime believes in being no one but yourself. All the Sanada do. She’d never trust someone who makes decisions under one name and then regrets them under another.” _And then Yukimasa would take your head,_ I don’t say, and I’m not sure I want it, but I know that’s what would happen. 

No wonder Lord Masamune can’t bring himself to decide. There’s pain and change no matter which choice he makes.

The shogun glances out at the city, then turns to me again. I can’t read the smile on his face this time. “I sincerely hope you never have to do such a thing.”

“I believe you,” I say, then bow and take my leave.

The guards follow me back to the guesthouse. I go into the room, even though I can’t sleep, and sit at the display of Lord Masamune’s swords and armor until sunrise, wondering which of the six claws he killed his rival with.

***

The shogun doesn’t see us off to Sendai in the morning, and no one stays behind. A light early snow falls to cover our tracks. Lord Masamune races ahead, veers off the road.

I keep up.


	14. Chapter 14

We return to Sendai in an ugly thaw, and the horses are at least as thankful as us. It takes a long, awkward time to stable all twenty-five, and even if I got there first I still have to wait until sunset. There’s a feast waiting. Everyone’s glad to see us home before winter.

Well, almost everyone.

I go straight to Kikuhime without even changing my clothes, as soon as everything else is done. She’s overseeing her sisters at training, counting out the strokes. The sun is right in front of her, makes the sweat on her face glow like fire and the coins in her hair glint and shine. I almost forget why I came here. I definitely forget why I left in the first place.

She doesn’t notice me first--her youngest sisters do, and cheer, yell “Shigenaga-sensei!” and barrel at me. At least they drop their spears before they charge. I hug them as best I can, what with my arms full, and they drag me over, chatter about what they’ve been up to and ask what I’ve been all at the same time with no way to answer.

Kikuhime leans on her naginata and bows politely, hides her face. She’s still angry at me, I know it, and I shouldn’t have expected otherwise, but I still try to smile. “Hey.”

She looks up, and I expected terseness but that’s not what her eyes say. “Hey.” She must still be breathless from calling the cuts.

I hold out the wakizashi that Yukimasa gave me. “I met your brother,” I say. “He gave me this to give to you and told me to say he’d see you soon.”

She stares at it, takes the blade. I think he hands are trembling. And she definitely has something to say but the younger girls get in there first, bombard me with questions about Yukimasa too fast and too many to answer--and I’m not going to tell them that their brother is a hateful, bitter person, even if it’s true. I smile, say what I can, keep trying to turn back to Kikuhime but the sisters are climbing all over me and it’s impossible.

But a half-dozen questions of “Did you bring me anything?” I can answer.

Now that I’m not holding the sword, I can give them the rest: a box full of wind-up crabs and crustaceans. I power one up and send if scuttling across the training pitch and even the second-oldest sister isn’t immune to chasing after it, and some of the others start winding up the rest of the toys in the box, right there at my feet.

I meet Kikuhime’s eyes. She’s smiling now, at least. That’s something.

“Where did you get these?”

“Shikoku,” I tell her. “Toyo made them out of some of the spare parts we mugged off the Xavists.” They’re prototypes for the next big one, which will also breathe fire and have some kind of lightning-prod in the tail, but I don’t tell her that.

She blinks. “Toyo?”

“One of Lord Motochika’s acknowledged bastards. She’s okay.”

“She?”

\--shit. “Yeah. She and Hidemune got really close.” I’m digging myself deeper and I know it. “She and her brother Kada are about our age. They said they’d write. Well, not write. Send pictures.” This isn’t working. This isn’t working at all. “You know we left Hidemune behind, right?”

She nods, holds a little tighter to the haft of her naginata. Fuck, why does she still hate me? I can feel it souring the air. “It’ll be good for him. Did he meet Yukimasa too?”

“No,” I say, quietly enough that I hope the younger girls don’t hear. “Not even Lord Masamune met him. Just me.”

Whether she hates me or not, she takes the hint, and we leave the girls playing with the crabs on the training ground, and go to the nearest equipment shed. For a moment I think, maybe hope, that we can talk inside, but she just leans her weapon against the wall and we keep our voices down. “There’s something you aren’t saying.”

“Yeah.”

“What’s wrong with Yukimasa?”

“Nothing’s wrong with him.” I can’t help looking at the ground. I don’t want her to see my face. She’ll find something in it. “He’s healthy and he’s got allies, and he still cares about all of you.”

“Stop lying, Shigenaga.”

“I’m not lying. He’s fine.”

“Then what aren’t you saying?”

“That I don’t like him, okay? I don’t trust him.” I lower my voice even more, lean in closer. “I believe in what he wants to do, and what you want to do. I met the shogun too and even if he’s a nicer person he’s wrong, and--”

“A nicer person?” She almost spits in my face. I should get out, now. I should stop.

No. I shouldn’t and I can’t.

“Kikuhime, I don’t think it’s going to work.” And once I’ve said that, there’s no way to keep the rest of the words from tumbling out. “I told you I believe in him, and you and your family, and that you should stand against the shogun with everything you have. And if Lord Masamune decides to back Yukimasa up, I’ll stand with him, but there’s no way Yukimasa can do it on his own and I wouldn’t trust him to keep the power he took.”

“Make up your mind!” So much for keeping this quiet, but I don’t blame her. “One minute you’re saying you believe us and support us and the next you’re saying we can’t?”

“You can’t without Lord Masamune. The shogun knows you’ll come and he plans to hold his ground, and he’s got the numbers--”

“Then give us the numbers, Shigenaga. If you believe in us so much, forget what Lord Masamune thinks! Don’t base your choice on his. That’s just an excuse.”

“Even if I could--”

“You’re hiding behind him to show you don’t really care.”

“This isn’t even about Yukimasa, is it. You’re just calling me a coward again.”

“That’s because you are one!”

“If I’m a coward because I don’t want to lose you to a losing battle, then fine! I’m a coward, okay? I’m a fucking coward! I’m a coward and I’ll still be a coward when you go off to fight the shogun and wipe yourselves out! There, are you satisfied?”

She socks me in the face. I can’t tell if it’s a slap or a punch--it’s definitely hard enough to be a punch, but it stings like a slap--and either way, I deserve it. It doesn’t send me reeling, but only because there’s the wall of the shed to brace myself against. Her naginata falls to the ground between us. She’s glaring at me with every challenge I could ever hope to fight, and she’s crying, and it’s all my fault.

I don’t fight back.

I can’t even say her name. I can’t even tell her I’m sorry. Anything more than just standing here feels as wrong as saying what I said.

So I back away, turn tail, and run. I think she calls for me, but I don’t listen, and a minute later I’m far enough toward the cliffs that the only footsteps I hear are my own.

Funny. I’ve only just come home, and I’m already running away. I wonder how far it is to Shiroshi from here.

***

Too far. It’s too far to run. That doesn’t mean I can’t stay out here and try until I pass out.

I haven’t tried to run away without a horse and provisions since I was a child. Well, I guess it’s pretty childish of me now, but I’m not running away, just running, just deciding not to be there. I bolt along the cliffs until it’s too dark to see my way back, until the land over the edges is as black and clouded and empty as the sky. You’d think there would be stars. No, you wouldn’t.

I finally sit down at a brook I’ve watered Negi at before, where it trickles over the edge of the cliffs in almost a waterfall. I can’t see where the water lands. No one would see me if I slipped. It’s a disgusting thought, but it crosses my mind. Somewhere in the back of my head, around the place he pulls my hair, Lord Masamune reminds me that I don’t get to decide when I die. I don’t. That belongs to him, like the rest of me.

Damn it, I’m not even armed. At least they know I can’t commit seppuku without a sword, let alone without a second. No one will worry.

But I can wait out here, in the silence, until I’m not thinking about it anymore.

A nearby brush rustles. Birds scatter, and something else growls, low and creaking.

...Or I could get mauled by a tiger. That works too.

I wait, lean against the nearest rock, don’t even bother holding my breath. Its footpads stalk closer, crunch leaves and twigs underfoot.

“My daimyo says I taste good,” I tell it. “You’ll have a good meal. You might even have fun, unless you want me to fight back.”

“I assure you, Lord Shigenaga, I have no intention of eating you! I implore you, do not offer yourself as food to wild beasts! Lord Masamune would be most displeased. And angry, I am certain!”

No, that tiger didn’t just speak. It must have been a man all along--a noble one at that, the way he talks, and young in spite of the exalted language. Maybe I did make it to the next fief. Maybe he’s a steward or a traveler. Whoever he is, he’s coming closer, but I can’t exactly see him, even if by the sound of his feet he’s definitely on this side of the rock.

“Fine,” I tell him. “I guess you’re not here to rob me either. It’s not like I have anything, anyway.”

“You have a great deal, Lord Shigenaga. Though I would certainly not take it from you! Indeed, I have come to give you something, not take it!”

“Did you come from Sendai?”

“Indeed I have not. Though I have kept watch on Lord Masamune there, when he has felt need of me--it seems I bring him even less peace now than I did in life.”

I’m talking to a ghost.

No. I’m talking to the spirit of the tiger.

“I am glad that Lord Masamune has found some comfort in you,” Lord Yukimura says, and steps into view beside me. I can’t see his face, but his shape and build are like Kikuhime’s, and he wears the same six coins that she does, on a string around his neck instead of in his hair. He’s almost completely bare from the waist up but what clothes he does wear are red and white and ornamented with flame, and when he sits down next to me he doesn’t seem to feel the cold at all. “But each day I watch him, I fear that comfort may not be what he seeks.”

I bring my knees up to my chest, lean on them. “And what would that be?”

“He seeks victory,” Yukimura says.

“Victory?”

“Certainly! Since he has not bested me yet, I cannot think of anything else he would pursue so wholeheartedly.”

“But you died.” My breath catches in my throat. “He killed you.”

“That does not mean Lord Masamune was victorious,” he says.

Clouds cross the sky above us, and the stars peek through.

“I have no regrets,” Yukimura goes on, and the pride in his voice pounds in my ears. “I know that my children are strong, and that they hold each other as dearly as I held them. I know that the people of Kai will prosper, and the fields will grow, whether my son reclaims the land or not, and I know that within all of them their spirit remains. And Lord Masamune honors my memory, though surely it pains him to admit he lost. I saw our rivalry through to its end, and gave him my all.”

_But Lord Masamune hasn’t done the same,_ the ghost doesn’t say. 

I shut my eyes. He’s still there, I know, but I’m starting to picture Kikuhime’s face where his should be and I can’t look. “Thank you, sir.”

“I have done nothing worthy of your thanks, Lord Shigenaga!”

“You said you’ve watched over Lord Masamune,” I say. “I should be doing that, not you.”

“Certainly not! For one thing, you did not know what to watch for until now. And you have done your utmost with what you did know. I can only hope you will be as vigilant with all those you love as I am, as you live and after!”

When I thank him again, there’s nothing beside me but warmth and the faint glow of fire.

***

“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Lord Masamune says.

So much for sneaking back.

I snap the door shut behind me, since I don’t have to worry about being quiet. It’s past midnight, after all, and here he is, up. Well, awake, but not up--I honestly can’t tell if he’s drunk or just sleepless, the way he’s sitting on the futon, one knee up, kimono open. The lanterns are low but not out. Shadow fills the hollow around his eye, no matter how I try to look him in it.

“Where were you?”

“Just out,” I say. “I went for a run. You can reprimand me for it later, your Lordship.”

“I can reprimand you for it right now,” he says, gathers himself up from the futon like he’s assembling parts of a puppet or a corpse. There’s menace in every angle. “I thought you were getting stronger.”

“I am, your Lordship.”

“Strong enough to run away, that it?” He grins. For all the shadow, his teeth are as sharp as ever. “Strong enough that you’re gonna throw me off and think you aren’t mine?”

“No,” I say, “I wasn’t running from you.”

“Then what’ve you got to run from, gorgeous?”

“Nothing. And neither do you.”

He scoffs, teeth still bared. I think he’s still grinning, not seething but it’s hard to tell in the lowlight. “So you think I’m running.”

“Worse, your Lordship.” I come closer. I don’t care how stupid it is. “I think you’re hiding.”

I’ve only heard the room this silent before when both of us had swords drawn. 

“Hiding,” he says. 

“Hiding.”

“Looks like someone’s gone back to being all balls and no scruff.”

“You’re hiding because you didn’t just kill him, you _lost_ to him.” Heat flares up at the base of my neck, and I keep talking no matter how he glares at me. “He won. He did something you couldn’t.”

“You little shit--”

“You may have won the duel but he stood up for himself. You couldn’t do that. Yukimura never did anything he didn’t believe was right, and you deliberately did something you believed was wrong--”

“Shut up about shit you don’t know, kid--”

“--so he won! He beat you, and the reason you can’t find anything to do is you know you’re weaker than he is!”

He lashes out at me with claws he doesn’t have.

I’ve fought him hand-to-hand before, but not like this. He goes for my throat, and I get his wrists, twist toward his blind side. He doesn’t let go, and his nails bite into my skin, his thumbs jab my neck. But I’ve fought back before, and almost won, and this time I _will_ win. I wind my arms over his and bear all my weight down, hold his wrists so tight I could break them both--duck out of the way of his head and side-swipe it with mine--tangle my leg behind his to trip him, throw him off, anything--

He rails on, growls that he’s the one-eyed dragon and he won, **won** , no one’s stronger. But I can finally look him in that eye, this close, and remind him who he’s fighting.

I have never seen Lord Masamune scared. I don’t think that’s what I’m seeing now. But the trembling in his eye isn’t only anger and possessiveness anymore.

This time, when I throw myself against him, he lets go of my throat. I’m still seeing haloes around the lanterns but there’s no time to look. He keeps fighting. So do I. But now it’s him tearing at me with punches and kicks and I know by now not to block, not to dodge, just to hit first and hit harder. He gets me in the chest--that’s fine. I get him in the hip. Then the shoulder. Then I take him by the wrist and pull, hard, and no, it’s not enough, that only works when you’re stronger than what you’re fighting and I’m not, not yet--

\--and not when I’m afraid to hurt him--

\--but he’s also afraid to hurt me.

He counters my throw and flings me into the display of six swords. I bruise, and they scatter, some underneath me, some to the side, one in reach of my hand. I grab for it, more instinct than anything else, even if something is blasting through my head, _not him, your fight isn’t with him._ I take hold of the nearest hilt. He watches me, dares me to move.

It’s not with him. My fight isn’t with him. It never has been. He’s not who I’m supposed to measure myself against. He’s not who I need to face more than anything in the world.

He smirks at me like he knows it before I do.

I grab the sword and bolt out of the room. The sheath catches on the floorboards, slips away. I leave it behind and don’t look back.

The women’s quarters aren’t far at all, just two courtyards. No one stops me, no one comes after me, and the guards out front don’t have time to do anything but blink before I barge clean into the house and start shouting.

“Sanada Kikuhime! Sanada Kikuhime, come out and face me!”

Plenty of other people yell first, mostly at me to get out. I don’t, and start pounding the hilt of the sword on the doors.

“Kikuhime! I’ve come to challenge you!”

“Shigenaga?”

There. One of the doors slides open and there she is, a mess from sleep, her hair tangled and loose and beautiful. Even if she’s only in her kimono she’s already armed. She probably thought someone had come to attack her. She’s only half wrong.

I don’t bow, or kneel, or anything, just flash my sword and look her in the face, as steady as she deserves. “I, Katakura Shigenaga, have come to challenge you according to your honorable terms!”

Fire teems through her eyes, or someone lit a lantern somewhere, or the guards are coming for me. I don’t know. I don’t care. “I accept!”

“Then name your time and place.”

“The tournament stands, immediately! Who are your witnesses?”

“I don’t care!”

“Then lead on, Katakura Shigenaga, and prepare yourself!”

One of the women coughs and groans from another room. “Keep it down! For heaven’s sake, you two, not even the crows are awake.”

I apologize as quickly as I can, and make for the tournament pitch. I’ll see Kikuhime there when she’s armed and ready.

It takes no time at all, and my blood is still racing when she stands across from me, naginata in hand, hair twisted off her face and held with the six coins. There are witnesses--a few guards and pages and ladies in the stands who came when they heard the commotion, and Toshichiyo with a pocket-watch to tell us when to start. That’s all I see of any of them, that’s all I care about any of them, it’s really just me and Kikuhime and I feel like I’ve been waiting for this fight my whole life.

I search myself for any fear, any regret, and find absolutely nothing.

Toshichiyo calls the start, and I launch myself at Kikuhime, cut after cut after cut, and whether she parries or attacks, we meet. I can’t tell who’s attacking, who’s defending: for every slice of her blade, there I am, and she’s there wherever mine connects. I pummel her with strikes, one after another, left, right, over, and there she is. She twists the haft of her naginata around my blade, turns us both aside, but I hold. I think the crowd might be cheering or maybe that’s just laughter bubbling up in my ears. This is perfect. I could fight her forever.

I don’t know how long we go at it, tearing stripes of raw earth out of the pitch, chipping the rails, sending up sparks whenever our blades connect, but no one tells us to stop. I don’t want to. I couldn’t if I tried. I don’t even know where this strength is coming from, why I can keep going even after my throat sears from lack of breath and a dozen scrapes and bruises should have slowed my arms down long ago. She never stops to catch her breath either, never takes a moment to reseat her grip or lengthen her reach. Her blade whirls over my head and I arc under it, lunge at her and still meet armor and strength. I keep my grip loose on the hilt, feel every parry, every slice, every beat of her heart through her skin and her armor. She could feel mine. I hope she does. I want her to.

I can’t win, but it isn’t futile. It’s passion, it’s joy, it’s everything.

Something boils over from the stands, floods my ears and my eyes and my heart. I think my father might be here, watching me, us, this. I know Kikuhime’s father is, from somewhere beyond our reach.

Her naginata is aflame, and stabs straight toward me.

That’s fine. That’s good. My sword is burning too.

I’m not sure how it started and frankly I don’t care. My sword is blazing from the tip of the blade all the way up my arms, right into the corners of my eyes. I can’t let it surprise me, so I don’t, just fight, just lash out and fight fire with fire. It fills us both but doesn’t burn our clothes or our skin, so good, nothing’s wrong, we can keep going. She yells, but not in pain, just with the strength of her overhand. I jump up and parry it, then slice down at her on the opposite arc, knock the coins out of her hair. It tumbles out over her shoulders, a tangle of waves. Nothing burns except us, me, this, this is amazing, I have to keep going, strike low at her knees and then up at her braced arms, at her weapon, at every part of her this fire can reach.

There’s a commotion, somewhere, but it’s not ours. I think the equipment shed might have just exploded.

It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but fighting Kikuhime until neither of us can stand.

Even the ground is on fire now, warms my ankles every time my feet touch down. I don’t know if we’re on the pitch anymore, I don’t think so, the ground’s less even, made of beams and logs and brambles, all burning. We must have gotten past the rails, out of the stands and into the orchard. I don’t mind. There’s no one else at all here now. She yells my name, and I yell hers with breath I didn’t think I had, didn’t think at all. Our blades clash, shudder so powerfully I feel it in my teeth. Flame stings my eyes, chaps my mouth. I have to kiss her. I have to fight her. I think they might be the same thing.

We’re still holding our weapons when our mouths connect. I don’t know who started it. I don’t care. Fire surges up around us both, sets the branches overhead aflame, and I breathe in smoke and steam and the taste of her. Her tongue is as hot as the world around us but I can’t stop tasting it, rubbing mine against it, fighting her here too, like this too, it hasn’t stopped, it won’t stop--I let go of the sword but that’s okay, if her hands are in my hair she must have let down her weapon too so we’re fighting like this now, that’s all. Her skin is slick. I taste the sweat on her neck, lick it clean until she shouts my name again, back her into a tree or a wall or whatever is closest so I can get past her reach, kiss her, fight her, have her--she breaks the straps on my armor, I shove hers aside, kiss all I can touch and touch all I can.

Her legs wrap around my waist, and she pulls me in.

It’s still a fight, but not to keep moving--I don’t think anything could stop us now, not the fire, not the ram of her back and my knees against the tree, not the scrape of our teeth as we try to kiss through it all. She pounds her hips against mine and spreads her legs to take me deeper, hammers my back with her heels and holds onto my hair, and I support her with everything I can spare, everything that isn’t driving me into her. I’ve never moved faster or harder, never wanted it this much, but it doesn’t, won’t, _can’t_ stop.

She shouts my name into my mouth when she comes. I hold on just long enough to hear it.

I can’t breathe. I can’t stop kissing her either, so I breathe with her instead. I think she’s doing the same thing, because we just keep our mouths together, no matter how we cough and laugh. Her fingers thread through my hair to my neck and what little is left of my voice comes out in a sigh, into her skin. I love this. I love her, and this, and everything is right with the world.

We’ll do even better next time.

We’re both a mess--her clothes are tattered under the armor and I think mine are too, and my knees are bloody. There are bruises on her neck--that’s definitely my fault, but she got me too, I can feel it--and her naginata is upended in the moss a few meters away, next to my, well, Lord Masamune’s sword, in one of the few bushes that hasn’t caught fire.

Wait.

_Fire._

***

Well. Um. Come sunrise, I’m kneeling in front of Lord Masamune with my forehead to the floor, and it’s time to apologize.

I think most of the fires are out by now. We tried to help and then my father dragged me here instead. By the hair.

I regret nothing.

“Man, this brings back memories,” Lord Masamune says. He took his sword back as soon as I brought it and now he’s tapping it against his palm like a cane. I’m doomed.

I still regret nothing.

“So,” he asks, “you know how long you held out?”

“No, your Lordship. Toshichiyo had the clock.”

“Yeah, and he told me it was twenty minutes before you blew up the shed and then another thirteen before anyone saw smoke in the orchard.” He laughs. “You have a **party**?”

I blush. “Yes, your Lordship.”

“You do anything that could get her pregnant?”

“...yes, your Lordship.”

“Well, guess you know what you’ve gotta do.”

Even now, none of that warmth has really left my shoulders, my spine, anything. “Nothing in the world would make me happier.”

“Then you better hope she’ll take you.”

I nod, and keep my face to the floor. It hurts to kneel, and I’m sore just about everywhere, but I already want to fight her again, like that--and feel that fire in me. That’s the warrior’s spirit the shogun was talking about. I guess I had to fight the right person first. I’m not sure if that person was me or Kikuhime, but either way, there it is. There I am.

“Hey. Gorgeous.”

He wants me to look up, and I raise my head, wait.

He grins as bright as the sunrise. “Nice job.”

It’s probably ungracious of me to burst out laughing. I still do. “Thank you, your Lordship.”

“I still owe you fifteen lashes for stealing one of my claws.”

“I’ll make you fight for every single one of them.”

“That’s exactly what I want to hear.”

***

I lead Negi to the training ground at just before sunset. I’ve made the rest of the arrangements--my father says that there are gifts in Shiroshi already on their way--but this is better to do on my own. I’ve had a new saddle made for Negi, a little smaller. I think she might be finished growing, and I know I’m not.

Kikuhime stops calling the cuts for her sisters immediately, when she sees me. It must look like Negi is saddled up for a journey. Since I definitely have to be punished for what I did yesterday, it makes sense that she’s afraid, and I don’t blame her for stopping. Even the girls are quiet for a second when I don’t stop walking in.

“Shigenaga,” Kikuhime says, and I could kiss her right there, “that fight was magnificent, and I--I won’t concede victory, but you held out, and--”

I place Negi’s reins in her hand, and get on both knees in front of her. “Sanada Kikuhime, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

She says yes--well, she says yes about a dozen times, and drags me up and kisses me until half of her sisters are shrieking that it’s gross.

***

“So about the guest list,” Lord Masamune says.

My father takes notes. I nod, and let Lord Masamune talk, and Kikuhime holds my hand under the table.

“I’m thinking this’ll be the biggest party we’ve had in these parts for a while,” he starts, and tallies on his fingers. “Got a lot of people to invite, **you see?** There’s everyone who’s anyone in Oshu...drum up a couple thousand from what’s left of the Uesugi...maybe we can strong-arm one or two Maeda into it...Hidemune’s gonna bring another grand up if he can get out of Shikoku, and how many did you say Yukimasa was bringing?”

“Three hundred,” I say--and then remember. “No. Twenty thousand.”

My father smiles, and takes the note. Kikuhime gets it a moment later, and adds, “There’s also the Saika faction--I’ll be thrilled to see Magoichi-sensei again, and I’m sure we’re strong enough now--and I think Koga may have some people to send.”

“Sounds about right,” Lord Masamune says. “Got anyone else?”

“If Yukimasa’s bringing so many people, don’t invite the shogun,” I say, because I understand Lord Masamune’s meaning completely.

Sanada Yukimura rose up against the shogun. Date Masamune will not be outdone.

“Right,” he says, grinning wide like the dragon he claims to be. “You’ll see him when we march on Edo for your honeymoon.”


	15. Chapter 15

“Four times!” Kikuhime says. “Four times, and four ridiculous hats--”

“They’re not that ridiculous.”

“Yes they are, and so’s yours. But you only have to wear one of them. Why do I have to change into four different kimono?” She sighs, and runs the sharpener along the edge of her naginata a couple more times, then leans her head against my shoulder. Sparks fly, as much between us as the whetstone and the blade. “I know Lord Masamune wants to impress everybody, but that money should be going to the troops, not my clothes.”

“Technically, it’s still going to the troops,” I remind her. It’s been two months, and Kikuhime has assured me she’s got proof that she isn’t pregnant, so of course we’re marching on Edo together. Which means that if Lord Masamune is giving Kikuhime a bridal trousseau, that money _is_ going to the troops.

She elbows me in the side. I elbow her back. It turns into tussling on the floor of the rebuilt equipment shed pretty quickly. She comes out on top this time, twists my arm behind my back and pins me to a crate face-first. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a hold on her--I’ve got her behind the knee, and all I need to do is roll over to trap her instead, so I do it, but it doesn’t last. She punches me. We laugh, and kiss, and somewhere in the middle of kissing she captures both of my arms _and_ the end of my ponytail and pins me under the rack of spears, preening like a tiger.

I love her so much.

“If you really want, we can sell the kimono after you wear them,” I say. “But shouldn’t we keep them for when we have a daughter?”

“All right,” she says. “But what about the ridiculous hats?”

That, we argue about for another ten minutes. But the arguing and the kissing are pretty much the same, and I think we both win.

***

Lord Keiji is one of the first to arrive, three days before the ceremony--the same day Yorifusa loses a page tournament to Yukinobu and gets packed off back to Edo, and good riddance--and says he’ll be staying the longest. He also says he’s just here for the wedding, not for the fight, but “Don’t tell Masamune that,” he adds, when we’re alone in the bathhouse, staving off the cold and dealing with our hair. “I know he’ll grill me about it later, but I’m tired of war.”

“But you’re not going to try and break them up?”

“Nah,” he says. “When I broke up Sekigahara it was because they were both being short-sighted idiots. Well, and because I was drunk as a fish. But this peace...you can’t really call it a peace if everyone’s forcing themselves into it.”

“So you think Lord Masamune is right.”

“I didn’t say that. I wish he wanted peace. I think he does, otherwise he wouldn’t have held out for so long. But he’s got something to take care of first, and I think the peace that comes after that will be stronger, as long as the rest of you are careful.”

I nod. “I’m worried about Yukimasa.”

“Yeah, so am I. Hard to feed a tiger that hungry. Pass me that, will you?”

“A whole pack of them,” I say, and hand him the comb he gestured for. “I’m not sure Kikuhime’s going to stop him. I mean, I do want them--us--to defeat the shogun and end the unification, and I do want Lord Masamune in charge of what comes next. But do you think the shogun has to die for that to happen?”

“Nope. I knocked some sense into his thick head once. You can do it again.”

“But not if Yukimasa’s already hacked it off.”

“Right.” He works through a really stubborn tangle in one of the greyer sections, sputters into the steam and chokes on it a little. “Ow. Crap. Anyway, I don’t blame you for worrying about that. But you really think the rest of the Sanada will back him up?”

“I haven’t brought it up with Kikuhime yet,” I admit. “But it’s her choice, not mine. I know she wants to see him defeated, but the way she’s talked about him in the past I don’t know if defeated means _dead_. Disgraced, probably. And stripped of his land, or at least sent back to Mikawa.”

“That won’t stop Ieyasu.”

“But words will. Bonds will.”

“Now you’re talking,” Lord Keiji says. He finally gets the knot undone, curses with relief. “And guess what? You’ve got a pretty big one of those bonds--a whole bunch of them, actually--and who knows? Maybe you can tug on your end of Yukimasa a little until he sees it your way.”

Yeah, right. “Or maybe I could punch a hole in the sky.”

“Hey, I knew I guy who did that once. It’s totally possible!”

Sometimes I forget that this is my life. 

***

Toyo and Kada ran into Hidemune on the way, and all three show up together at suppertime two nights before. The twins say they’re sorry their dad can’t make it, and Hidemune says he’s sorry that he can’t stay long, and everyone knows the reasons for both are the same. I’m sure everyone will be okay, and that the battle down south will be mostly to _prevent_ things from getting too bad, not to make it worse--but I’m still glad that they all came up to see the wedding first, even if their part in the campaign is somewhere else.

“And you can finally stop sleeping with his old man,” Kada says, leaning over his rice to flirt with me. “So. How ‘bout it?”

“The contract isn’t up until tomorrow night,” I say, “and thanks, but no thanks.”

“Yeah, lay off him,” Hidemune says. “It’ll just get weird if you keep hitting on him.”

Both twins look at Hidemune like he’s off his rocker. “Aw,” Toyo says, “someone ain’t got the notion how to share.”

“Can we please drop this?” Hidemune and I say at about the same time--he uses slightly different words, but the sentiment’s the same.

“No,” Kikuhime says, leaning in and looking deadly, if I do say so myself. “I have to say, I’m intrigued. What’s this about sharing?”

“Hey, you’ve got nothing to be jealous for.” Toyo may say that, but she’s also puffing out her chest, like roosters do when they’re about to scuffle over a hen. “We’re just pointing out that he’ll be fair game once his time’s up with your boss.”

“Excuse me, I thought you remembered that you came here for a wedding.”

“Yeah, and the way I count it there’s still a couple hours where he’s game--and after, if he wants it to be.”

“Is that a challenge, Toyo?”

“It is if you want it to be, princess.”

“Either it is or it isn’t! Challenge me or don’t, unless all you’ve got to bring to the table are _crabs_.”

I really hope that joke went over Toyo’s head. It almost went over mine. Hidemune gets it too, though all he says to Kikuhime is “She doesn’t. I’d know.” 

Well, so much for Toyo not getting it. But all she does is burst out laughing, and then so does Kikuhime, and then all of us are, and Hidemune waves over another bottle of sake.

“I mean it, though,” Toyo says. “Wanna go at it tomorrow morning?”

Kikuhime smiles. “All right. And that goes for you too, Kada, I’ll fight you both!”

Toyo pounds the table with her fist. “You got it! What’s your weapon, anyway?”

“Naginata.”

“Been a long time since I fought another lancer aside from Pops! This’ll be good.”

I remember that the raids on the Xavists aren’t the same as real war to them. I remember what Lord Masamune said about what we’d do in Shikoku: _fighting, yes, war, probably not._

They won’t be in the main fight--the war--the _campaign_ up here. I hope it stays that way. But the way they’re talking, I’m pretty sure this will work.

***

They get set up for the fight like it’s just a friendly spar, once the pages have cleared the pitch, never mind that we’re getting married tomorrow. It turns out that this is a big enough deal that some of the pages stay behind to watch, and all the Sanada girls, and some of the younger soldiers that have come up as wedding guests. The sky is clouded over and it’s cold enough to see everyone’s breath, all mingling into a cloud in the lowest seats of the stands.

Toyo and Kikuhime get off to a great start, stabbing at each other, using their reach. Kikuhime’s better of course--I’ll say that no matter who’s listening--but that doesn’t mean Toyo’s not putting up a good fight, and she’s just about to tap out and call in Kada too when someone shouts from the top of the incline.

“Damn it! How dare Masamune not come out to meet me straight away! I don’t care how many other people there are, and he’d better explain himself as soon as he gets here. No one’s even taken my horse!”

Shit. Well, he had to arrive sometime.

“And after he had the gall to have us stopped at every toll station!” Yukimasa comes in to view on the hill, and the fight stalls once Kikuhime puts up her naginata, goes stock-still. 

“Easy there, tiger,” Lord Musashi says, beside him.

“Either he welcomes us to Oshu, or he doesn’t, and I won’t let this stand! Damn it, stop standing there and take my fucking horse!”

Toshichiyo, who is closest to the hill, has on the kind of awed expression that I’d expect to see at a fireworks malfunction. He takes the reins immediately.

Even from this distance, I can see Yukimasa’s teeth flash, and I want to punch them out. “ _Go!_ And tell your master I’m here.”

“Yes, Lord Yukimasa!”

And because Toshichiyo doesn’t stutter and guesses right, everyone down here hears it.

This may be the only time in recorded history that the entire Sanada clan is silent.

I wish I were standing closer to Kikuhime. I could hold her hand, so no one would have to see it tremble. But there she is, staring up at Yukimasa and Setsuna, holding onto the haft of her naginata like she doesn’t know whether to take it up or throw it down. I wouldn’t either.

The littlest Sanada sister is the first one to speak up. “...Yukimasa?”

He finally takes stock of where he is, of who’s watching. That littlest sister might have no memories of him at all, might have expected someone more like Yukinobu--might be seeing a twisted version of the father she doesn’t remember either. And if Yukimasa understands anything, he had better understand that, and get it right now, or he truly will have lost his family forever.

“...Yeah,” he says, blushing up to his ears. “Hi.”

He doesn’t get a choice. The youngest Sanada girls and Daimaru bumrush him, tear up the hill screaming and flailing their arms and pounce on him until he falls over. Daimitsu and Yukinobu get in on it too and soon there is just a pile of Sanada, rolling down the hill and cheering. Setsuna rolls her eyes, but watches, and catches my eye to make sure I know she’s got this under control. I trust her.

When he manages to get himself out of the pile, he wipes his eyes. Asshole or not, I completely understand that he wouldn’t want me to see him cry, so I make sure not to look at him. Besides, Kikuhime’s trying not to cry either, and she throws her arms around him and hides her face in his shoulder, so he can take that hint too.

“Sorry it had to be like this,” he says, loud enough for me to hear.

She shakes her head, no, and pulls back enough to say, “It doesn’t matter.”

Everyone tugs on Yukimasa’s hair and clothes and swarms together long enough for me to stop worrying about it. He’s still a Sanada, and a samurai. Just a jerk.

“So,” Kikuhime says, still trying to stave off the tears and not let things get awkward. “Well, I guess you already know my betrothed, Shigenaga--”

So much for not worrying. There’s fire in his eyes now. “ _You._ ”

That’s just fine, there’s at least as much fire in mine and I don’t mind letting him see it. “Yeah. Me.”

“I told you to keep you hands off her!”

“You don’t have the right to tell me that!”

“If you ever do anything to hurt her, I swear--”

“What do you mean if I do anything to hurt her, you--”

“You idiots!” I’m too busy snarling at Yukimasa to block the naginata haft Kikuhime just slammed into the back of my head. It’s gratifying that she hit Yukimasa even harder, though.

***

The contract of fidelity is on the table between me and Lord Masamune. The scrivener has already written in the date of termination at the bottom, and the ink is barely dry, and we’re alone.

“You want it, gorgeous?”

I nod. “I’ll bring it to Shiroshi.”

“Figured as much.” He grins, gestures to the corner. “There’s a scroll case there with the rest of your wedding presents.”

“Your Lordship--”

“Just accept them.”

“--thank you.”

I bow, even if he doesn’t want me to, roll up the contract, and go over to check. There’s the scroll case, which I expected; the cuirass and greaves of the armor he commissioned for me a few months ago, which are the colors of a midnight sky (he says the thigh-plates and bracers will come later, when I’ve finished growing, and the helmet when I choose a device); a silver leather jacket, armored in the back with studs in the shape of the Date crest; and two swords that aren’t his to give.

“Your Lordship--”

“No, they’re supposed to be there. Kojuro’ll give you the rest of your gift after the wedding. Draw one.”

I do. A charge races up my arm, and flares into blue flame through the inscription on the lowest part of the blade: **Bonten Will Become the One-Eyed Dragon Soaring the Heavens.** His childhood name: my father’s oath.

Lord Masamune grins. “Do you believe what it says?”

“Yes,” I say, without a second’s hesitation.

“Then we’ve got nothing more to discuss.” He gets up from the table, wraps his arms around me from behind, and leans his chin onto my shoulder. He has to turn it up to reach, and now he knows it. We both know it. He laughs. “Doesn’t make you any less mine.”

“I know.” I lower my eyes, cover one of his hands with mine, keep the sword in the other. “But I’m prepared to make that change.”

“All right. So, one for the road? **Bachelor party?** ”

I laugh, and lean back against him. “Yeah.”

***

In the end, neither of us wears a ridiculous hat: Kikuhime covers all of her hair ornaments with a white hood in only one of the outfits, and I wear the chrysanthemum that Keiji gave me instead. After six hours of ceremony, processions, sake drinking, prayer, and Kikuhime changing into four different kimono, we are wed. It snows throughout the day, but that doesn’t stop any of the soldiers, well, wedding guests, from being ready to meet us for the feast.

My father is waiting at the shrine gate with four horses: his brown mare, Lord Masamune’s charger, Negi, and another charger, dark grey with a black mane and markings at the ankles and nose.

I take the reins from my father. “Does he have a name?”

“He will when you give him one,” he says.

That beaming smile hasn’t left his face all day, and I don’t plan to diminish it now. So I smile back, take a moment to help Kikuhime up into Negi’s saddle, then turn back to my new horse and look him over. I pat his sides. He headbutts me. “Well, since I already named Negi after the leeks, I guess I should call you Daikon.”

My father doesn’t have time to do more than chuckle at that--Lord Masamune’s already in the saddle, tailpipes blazing. “Keep up, gorgeous! Can’t be late to your own wedding feast!”

“Yes, your Lordship!” I swing up, and we all take off.

I know in my heart that it will be like this for the whole campaign: Lord Masamune, front and center, just ahead; my father, on his right, where he should be, and me on his left; Kikuhime at my side, close enough to touch even on horseback. This is how it should be. This is how I’ve chosen to live, and I regret nothing.

Lord Masamune yells, at the thousands of soldiers behind us, **“Are you ready, guys?”**

The cheer goes up, the race begins. Our wedding clothes fall away, leave armor behind.

**”Put your guns on!”**

“Yeah!”

We ride south to Edo a hundred thousand strong, and the snow melts in our wake.

***

***

**Author's Note:**

> Full faith and credit, and dedication, to Puel and Meg, for all their help and at least half the jokes.


End file.
